Dr Pratima Murthy: Creating systemic change to mental health access

As the director of Nimhans, Dr Murthy wants to take mental health and neuroscience interventions closer to the people

Published: Apr 17, 2025 04:28:06 PM IST

Dr Pratima Murthy, Director and senior professor of psychiatry, Nimhans Image: Mexy Xavier

Dr Pratima Murthy’s voice on the other end of the Zoom call has all the markings of a good psychiatrist. It is calm, empathetic and concise.

She mentions “systems change” multiple times in an hour-long conversation. In her case, this involves creating essential and long-term impact in how people perceive and access mental health care, and how well these services are delivered to them.

As the director of the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (Nimhans) in Bengaluru, Murthy is only the second woman (after Dr M Gourie-Devi in the 1990s), and the first female psychiatrist, to command the top post in 50 years of the centrally funded institute. The nodal centre for mental health and neurosciences in the country was allocated ₹860 crore in the 2025 Union Budget, to support training, awareness building, patient care and research.

The 64-year-old doctor is quick to mention that the budgetary outlay for Nimhans is for “the entire brain and mind, and not just for mental health”, meaning that apart from mental health, it also goes towards neuroscience specialties like neurosurgery, neurology, neuroradiology, etc. that “require high-end equipment”. Murthy, who studied and built her career at Nimhans, took charge of India’s largest mental health institution at a critical juncture in 2021, when the world was in the throes of Covid-19. “The pandemic showed us that all of us can get affected by mental health issues, and for those who are affected, there can be so many disruptions in access or continuation of care,” she says.

In order to understand better India’s mental health landscape in the post-pandemic world, Murthy is currently steering the ambitious second edition of the National Mental Health Survey across all states and Union Territories, which will be published in 2026. The first edition of the survey, which was published in 2015-16 and covered 12 states, was a “systems assessment” of mental health in India, she explains, and provided critical data such as the shortage of qualified mental health professionals in the country, and how one in 10 people in India suffered from a diagnosable mental health disorder. “In some ways, people recognising that mental health concerns are as common as physical health concerns was the biggest contribution of the first survey,” she says.

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The second survey will look at the prevalence of various mental health disorders in India, impact of Covid, differences in rural and urban areas, impact of migration and climate change, resources and health systems within individual states and Union Territories, and mental health of tribal and other vulnerable populations. “We are conscious that we not only focus on the treatment of mental disorders, which itself is a challenge, but also about developing good mental health and resilience among people,” she says.

During her tenure as director, Murthy has also been steering the government’s National Tele Mental Health programme. From October 2022, when it was launched, to mid-March 2025, the helpline service of the programme registered over 19 lakh calls from people across states, she says, adding that they have trained counsellors in every state to provide services in 22 local languages.

Murthy likes to say she was “born, raised and educated in one long stretch of Bengaluru”, which is Palace Road. As a child, she was interested in various subjects and extra-curricular activities. She set her heart on “some branch of medicine”, and secured an MBBS seat at the Bangalore Medical College in the early 1980s. “Once there, I was fascinated with how bodily processes occur, and the solid grounding in medicine that I got also increased my interest in understanding the mind and the brain,” she says. This led her to pursue psychiatry, which she describes as a field that “combines medicine with humanities”. She secured a diploma in psychological medicine from Nimhans in 1987 and followed it up with an MD degree in 1989.

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“Pratima was a hardworking and meritorious student who was patient, friendly and service-oriented,” says Padma awardee Dr CR Chandrashekar, a former professor of psychiatry and deputy medical superintendent of Nimhans who taught Murthy during her diploma and MD degrees.

He adds that throughout the different stages of career—assistant professor of psychiatry, head of the Centre for Addiction Medicine, head of the department of psychiatry, to now the director—Murthy has “helped Nimhans reach newer heights”, including receiving the 2024 Nelson Mandela Award for Health Promotion by the World Health Organization for contributions to mental health and wellbeing.

Murthy remembers being one in two girls in a batch of 10-odd students during her diploma studies in the 1980s. “Now, we intake around 40 students per year for postgraduation in psychiatry and more than 50 percent of them are girls. These ratios are improving,” she says, adding that it is crucial for women to be represented and occupy leadership positions in various aspects of mental health care.

She went abroad in the 1990s to pursue a diploma in psychological medicine from the University of Manchester in the UK. She says she was “intrigued by the good systems there”, but felt she was more needed in India since she could have much more impact here.

“My legacy is in leaving behind a robust system focussed on good patient care, a mark of excellence as a habit, encouraging research and international collaboration, and creating a model institution that promotes human resource development and beyond, and takes mental health and neurosciences to the masses,” she says.

(This story appears in the 18 April, 2025 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)