‘Mental health checks should be embedded in community health programme’: Neerja Birla

Interview/ Neerja Birla,, founder & chairperson, Aditya Birla Education Trust

At a recent conference in Delhi, two strangers walked up to Neerja Birla, founder and chairperson of the Aditya Birla Education Trust, with a confession. They told her they had once been “completely lost”, overwhelmed, unsure and reluctant to seek help. Opting for counselling at Mpower, founded by Birla in 2016, they said, became the turning point. The hardest step had been acknowledging to themselves that they needed support. Once they did, “there was no looking back”.

For Birla, such encounters are a reminder that mental health work is not abstract advocacy; it is about pulling someone out of what she calls a “black hole” and helping them find steadier ground again. For over a decade, Birla has worked to build that ground through Mpower.

Just before we begin our conversation, she recounts a recent, almost comic, episode. Her daughter Ananya and she were photographed outside Mumbai airport as Birla bent down to hug her dog Snoopy, completely unaware of the paparazzi. “It was suddenly all over [the media],” she says with a laugh, adding that she doesn’t follow everything that circulates online and uses social media sparingly.

The anecdote becomes an easy bridge into a deeper discussion about visibility, perception and vulnerability, especially for women constantly navigating public scrutiny, private battles and cultural expectations.

In this wide-ranging interview, Birla speaks candidly about why awareness without acceptance is not enough, why women are often conditioned to endure silently, her own experience with postpartum depression and how sisterhood, systems and self acknowledgement can together reshape India’s mental health narrative. Excerpts:

Q/ You have said that in India the problem is that despite awareness regarding mental health issues, it is the acceptance that still has a long way to go.

The awareness is better than what it was when we started. However, there is still a long way to go. But yes, there has been a mindset shift in a lot of pockets. I say acceptance is lacking because it is still very stigmatised.... As a result, though people are aware, they still hold back from seeking help. They prefer suffering in silence than owning up to it. From that point of view, mental health behaviour still needs a lot of change. And, as a community, if we are able to accept it better, it will automatically help in people opening up and seeking help. Very often in workplaces, people suffer in silence because of the stigma. They wonder whether their productivity and self-worth will be doubted if they come out with it. That stops them from seeking help.

Q/ In such a scenario, do you feel women face unique challenges? Do you think our cultural narrative needs to evolve to treat women's mental health as a problem in itself?

Yes. Along with stigma, there is also a lot of caring responsibility on women’s shoulders. Added to that, there is financial dependency. Women are also dealing with hormonal changes and upheavals in cultural settings. You may be having a difficult time at office and then you have to look after your children at home and you may be going through premenstrual syndrome or a menopausal phase, and everything sort of always intersects and comes together. They do not happen in parts. And that makes it more difficult for women. Statistics show that women are more prone to anxiety than men, and then coupled with the fact that you are supposed to bear it all silently, the emotional labour is never acknowledged.

Of course, it is great to be resilient, and resilience is often celebrated in a manner that even if you keep quiet about it, [it is assumed] that you are [being] very brave. But it is just normalised and that makes it even more difficult, because you always want to then reach that benchmark of being able to endure it quietly. Why should we endure it quietly? I think the narrative can change.... So nobody is shirking away from caregiving responsibilities, but at the same time one needs to acknowledge it—that yes, it is a difficult thing that I am doing and I am still doing my best but that does not mean that I cannot talk about it. Validating those feelings will really help women to seek help.

Q/ And yet society is more likely to address men's mental health issues than women's?

Men and women both go through mental health issues. I think both are dealing with stigmas and cultural narratives in their own spheres. Men are dealing with the fact that they are not supposed to show their softer side. They are not expected to cry, not supposed to be having mental health issues. So they deal with those stigmas. Women, on the other hand, deal with it but are expected to suffer quietly. So, I will not say that men's mental health issues are being dealt with more than women, but that both are dealing with their issues. On our helpline, about 78 per cent callers are men, which is very high. That tells me that men are willing to talk and like the fact that someone is there to listen to them and that they don't have to deal with gender bias and that they can freely talk about it.

I also feel that there is a huge stigma where people feel that if you are a high achiever or if you are doing well, then you cannot be dealing with a mental health issue. But the two can go together. Very often, there are high-performing individuals who could be highly depressed or dealing with severe anxiety and panic—they have set standards for themselves, there are expectations, and yet they are fighting a daily battle within themselves. So that is a big myth that high achievers cannot have mental health issues.

Q/ Motherhood is another role that women are expected to take on naturally, without being depressed or feeling low. What is your take on postpartum depression?

It is a reality. I have been through postpartum depression myself. The first time I went through it, after my first child was born, I didn't know what to do. I was riddled and saddled with so much guilt because we are expected to be happy, especially after your firstborn, as it is a great joy and it is. But you are also dealing with a low phase, which you are not able to explain to those around you. So creating awareness about it and talking about it is important because that is what helped me the second time. I realised there was something called postpartum depression only after I started reading about it following my first pregnancy. So, just the knowledge that something like this exists and validating my feelings helped me navigate it the second time. It didn't mean that I didn't go through it the second time, just that I knew how to deal with it.

Q/ In cities, we are at least aware of terms like postpartum depression. But people in remote parts of the country are not even aware that it exists.

We have seen women calling in with postpartum depression and maternal neglect. During pregnancy, women go through physical checkups. But I think mental health checkups, too, need to be embedded into the system, and which continues into the postnatal phase as well. Those checks and balances, once embedded into the community programme, will help normalise it.

Q/ Do you think such interventions are also necessary at the perimenopausal and menopausal stages?

Absolutely. I don't know how our mothers went through it because a lot of times they didn't even know what they were going through. So we don't have that advantage of lived experience. But the next generation, say, my daughters, they have already seen me go through it and they have that experience; they know what is to be expected. If we are able to put it into systems, have routine checkups, have more awareness, it will really help. Because we—people of my age—are actually the first generation in a sense that is actually getting exposed to it without having the lived experience of the past.

Q/ Women across age groups are battling social media pressures, albeit in different ways. How do we shift the social media narrative towards being supportive towards women's mental health?

Social media is here to stay. Using it appropriately and in a balanced manner is what one should do. It will be very ambitious and utopian to say that the content that goes out on social media needs to be regulated. But if the content is regulated and balanced, then there will be no problem at all. However, in the absence of that, the trick lies in your being able to consume it in a balanced manner and not overdoing it. Personally, after having consumed it for a few minutes, I feel like I cannot have any more of it. That is my ceiling. Overdoing anything is detrimental to your health and I think it is the same with social media.

The content on social media can be regulated if each person who is putting it out takes responsibility for it and puts out matter that we know is not going to harm people and that is not unreal. If, as a community, we can do that, it will be the best way. As of now, we need to self-regulate and have a check on ourselves and not overdo it.

Q/ How do women get the community around them to be their mental health cheerleaders?

When I realised that within my own ecosystem there were very few people talking about perimenopause, I started talking about it. I went through the journey myself. When it first hits you, it takes a little time to understand what is happening, because you are always attributing it to something. You do not realise the shift that is taking place inside your body. Then you are spending time getting adjusted to a new you because there is a shift in everything, right from your energy levels to the way you look, and brain fog is real. And I realised nobody was talking about it. I happened to talk about it to a friend of mine and it just so happened that even she felt the same. In that discussion, we realised that this was called perimenopause. And that conversation of 20 minutes made me realise that sisterhood is so important. I realised that there were so many other people facing the same issue. Even though it does not change what you are going through, it does help you sort of acknowledge it, and that in itself is a way of self care.