The Shrinking Couch

TSC introduces everyone to the idea of mental health and mental health conditions as a normal part of life, by talking about it openly, meaningfully and constructively. Our aim is to build a community which accepts, understands and provides support for anyone with mental health concerns. TSC is a space for comfortable and open sharing which encourages mutual support, akin to the space provided by the stereotypical therapists’ couch, but with easier availability and a larger outreach.

We want everyone to see mental health conditions as experiences causing discomfort, but not as cases of weak will. We want to share the many ways of approaching a mental health condition as something that can be helped, overcome, fought, treated or cured, but most importantly, it must be something that is supported. TSC will bring together stories to connect the personal yet collective nature of mental health conditions, to make difficulties of this nature relateable and less intimidating, both individually and societally.

Overall, we stand to promote:

• Awareness about mental health conditions and other psychologically distressing experiences
• Knowledge about mental health, by sharing proactive measures that will help people take charge of their own mental health

We want to address not just diagnostic categories of mental health conditions, but also experiential categories of life that can cause equal, though sometimes undiagnosable pain. Through sharing personal stories, highlighting professional work in the area and disseminating relevant information, TSC aims to reduce the stigma and treatment gap, and by doing so, build an active, informed and non-hierarchical mental health community in India.