BALM

BALM

BALM

Banyan Academy of Leadership in Mental Health

Event Calendar

Open Dialogue 2024 Edition Open Dialogue & Dialogical Practices is a 6 months certificate course (in a hybrid format) aimed at training that brings in a more humanistic approach for treating clients with mental health...
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Blog Posts

Newsletters If you want to know about all that is happening at BALM, do check our our newsletter! Keep reading September 16, 2022September 16, 2022 CTSI Newsletter is out! After a long break, we are...
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Publications

Publications Coming Soon…
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Banyan Academy of Leadership in Mental Health (BALM) strives to bridge treatment and care gaps through research, social action and education, to build effective and ethical leadership in the mental health sector for vulnerable populations. BALM began in 2007, a decade after the beginning of The Banyan, as a knowledge hub to disseminate research on mental health and document best practices of The Banyan. It was established as an institution of learning, research, training, and more. The broader vision was to build a cadre of mental health professionals through training and education, inform policy & implementation programmes through research, and run pilot programmes to find scalable solutions through social action.

MISSION

Education
To educate, train, and nurture human resources in the mental health sector through a multi-disciplinary approach to cater to the vulnerable and disadvantaged population. 
Research
To research on existing programmes and initiatives and find outcomes and hypotheses that can replicate and scale-up existing programmes meant to cater to the people at the intersection of poverty & mental illness.
Social Action
To create an inclusive space for populations and bring together different stakeholders on a platform to inform implementation in programmes through participation, research, and community engagement.

Our Centres


Research

Research has been an integral part of BALM since its inception, and the primary objective is to shed more light on increased access to mental health care particularly in the context of socio-economically disadvantaged groups. Scalability and sustainability are essential tenets for BALM and The Banyan, and most of the research does focus on creating and running scalable models for mental health care, recovery and rehabilitation for the vulnerable population. 

Key research conducted by BALM:  

  • Impact of Self-Help Groups (SHGs) with women members suffering from varying degrees of mental illness, and the pathway to recovery for these women.   
  • Experience of clients and caregivers at the Primary Health Centre (PHC) in a specific district.  
  • Responsive mental health systems to address the nexus between poverty, homelessness, and mental illness.  

The objective of these and many other research papers was to predominantly understand different perspectives, lived experiences, challenges and roads to recovery for clients and the role of caregivers in the recovery process.   

News and Updates

Education and Training

Education is an essential vertical for BALM, as it fulfils an important objective of developing human resource in mental health that is equipped enough to adopt an inclusive approach to treatment and care. It is paramount to develop leadership potential, strengthen capacities, and create a cadre of capable mental health professionals and social scientists particularly catering to the vulnerable population. The existing treatment and care gap in the mental health sector and a lack of multi-disciplinarity in the current programmes being offered for the mental health professionals creates a significant presence for BALM in the education space. BALM has always shifted focus from theory-oriented learning to practicum enabled pedagogy for students. 

BALM offers the following courses:

  Applied Buddhist Psychology 
Diploma in Community Mental Health 
Open Dialogue 
Short Courses in Mental Health Care and related fields  

Important Dates

Social Action

Social Action is a unique approach to training that combines education and capacity building with implementation and programmes. It is about the amalgamation of innovation and research to solve real-life issues in the mental health space for the vulnerable and disadvantaged population. Social Action ensures that programmes are constantly monitored, evaluated and measured against certain parameters to find the existing gaps/lacunae in them. Additionally, the lacunae/gaps are filled through innovative approaches, lived experiences, feedbacks and more.  

Fellowships

TVS Sundram Fasteners Limited supported BALM to launch the SFL Fellowship in the year 2019. It was conceptualized to bolster field-based learning through the learn-as-you earn model. This is the first of its kind fellowship in mental health in India, as it amalgamates practice with theory-based learning. The fellowship is dynamic as it focuses on individuals working in mental health, peer advocates and people who are passionate about mental health and development.  

Partners