Sangath

Sangath is an Indian mental health organisation that combines research, service delivery and community engagement to make mental health care more accessible. It describes its work as "rooted in care, driven by research, powered by community." It uses community and health system resources to deliver psychosocial interventions that prevent and manage mental health problems. Its work covers the whole lifespan, from early childhood cognitive development and youth depression to adult substance use, psychoses and dementia. Since 1996, Sangath has pioneered task-sharing, which means training lay counsellors to deliver low-cost, community-based mental health care. This model started in Goa and has since been adapted in other countries.

Headquarters: Goa, India

Major Areas of Work

• Research and Innovation: Designing and rigorously evaluating interventions to prevent, detect and manage mental health conditions.

• Service Delivery: Building community-based, person-centred mental health services into existing health systems so they are accessible, scalable and culturally responsive.

• Capacity Development: Training health and care professionals to deliver evidence-based interventions within public health systems.

• Public Engagement: Involving people with lived experience and the wider public to shape and improve its work and reduce stigma.

• Digital Mental Health: Building scalable digital tools for diverse needs, from youth support platforms to relapse monitoring and therapy support.

Major Initiatives and Programmes

• Baatcheet (It's Ok To Talk): A bilingual storytelling platform co-designed with young people, sharing peer-curated stories that build connection, reduce stigma and support coping in young adults.

• SHARP: Smartphone-based tools that monitor the risk of relapse.

• PracticePal: Chatbots that support therapy.

• IMPACT-T: A tele-psychiatry project that brings psychiatric care to underserved Tibetan settlements in Karnataka.

• Sangath Wellbeing Centre: A free, multilingual mental health service set up during the COVID-19 pandemic, offering a toll-free helpline and tele-counselling in Hindi, Marathi, Konkani and English for frontline workers and the general public.

Impact

According to its Annual Report 2025-26, Sangath has served more than 302,813 people, trained more than 5,906 healthcare workers and non-specialists, and carried out more than 150 research projects. It also reports more than 1,200 tele-psychiatry sessions delivered through the IMPACT-T project.

Sangath suits people who want to work where research and practice meet in mental health. Staff work alongside public health systems, lay counsellors, communities and people with lived experience, and the work spans clinical research, intervention design, training, digital tools and community outreach. Because the organisation has decades of task-sharing experience that is now used internationally, it is a good fit for researchers, public health professionals, psychologists, counsellors and programme staff who want their work to shape how mental health care is delivered at scale.