Tribute | ‘Keshav Desiraju placed focus on mental health care as basic right for all’

‘He called for convergence between health and social sectors in developing robust responses’

Even as growing evidence emerged on the links between physical and mental health and social disadvantage, Keshav Desiraju recognised poverty, deprivation and poorer social networks as predictors for poorer health and mental health outcomes. Therefore it wasn’t a surprise that as architect of India’s Mental Health Policy and Mental Health Care Act, he emphasised mental health care as a basic right for every citizen, placing the onus on the State to find both funding and developing a road map to ensure appropriateness and accessibility of care. This was his biggest win! Mental health care was no longer exclusively within the ambit of health care but was part of the broader development discourse and linked to how people lived, and to corresponding values of equity, dignity, universality and person-centredness. Keshav was a visionary not just in that he made landscape level changes in how he placed mental health care at the centre stage within the health agenda, but also in that, perhaps for the first time, he outlined precipitating and perpetuating factors linked to structural barriers such as caste, class and gender-related disparities. He therefore recommended convergence between health and social sectors in developing robust responses.