My Journey
In the early part of my career, I worked as Head of Dept of Psychology at Sweekaar Rehabilitation Inst, Hyderabad which primarily provided Mental Health intervention for the differently abled. In addition, I undertook projects with National Inst of Mental Health (NIMH) and with Dr Reddy’s for Mental Health education. My private practice began alongside in 2002. Between 2008-2013 I was once again associated with Dr. Reddy’s for a project with the nursing population, imparting trainings on patient counselling and stress management across healthcare facilities in Maharashtra. I moved onto full-time private practice in 2010.
My private practice involves providing treatment to clients with mood disorders, anxiety disorders, and adult survivors of abuse and neglect. My area of interest is in working with Traumatic stress and I have undergone training and supervision for working with complex trauma. I have also presented papers and posters at various National and International conferences on Trauma Care, and trained groups of students and mental health professionals on Trauma Counselling.
Mental Health Literacy has been an area of passion and I write educative articles about mental health on my website blog, and through popular media such as Times of India, Midday, Mumbai Mirror, DNA among others. For the Children’s newspaper RobinAge, I ran a Personality Quiz Section, creating over 46 original quizzes for children. I have also been invited as a trainer and panel expert at various Mental Health events organised by Times of India, Holy Spirit Hospital, Arpan, Godrej, NHRD, Vasantha Memorial, Schizophrenia Awareness Association, Tata Communications, PatientsEngage and TISS among others.
Currently I am also a Panel expert for Bipolar India, a peer support group for Bipolar Disorder and Depression which hosts monthly meetings to support the needs of the community. I have also initiated two EMDR supervision groups for clinical practitioners with EMDR consultants from US and Europe.
During the COVID-19 Pandemic, I was part of several initiatives to create a support network for coping with the Mental health crisis. This included free counselling for Healthcare workers, and grief affected families, as also organising a Support Group for Therapists to share their emotional experiences. Some media initiatives through radio shows, webinars, and news articles too helped to further create awareness.
Although my journey is fairly a brief one, it’s been my fortune to receive two awards – from the Young Environmentalists Foundation and Times Healthcare in the Young Achievers Category.