India Launches National Programme to Provide Free Mental Health C...

The Ministry of Education and Ministry of Health jointly launched the Manodarpan Plus programme, placing trained school counsellors in every government secondary school across India over a four-year rollout, covering approximately 165,000 schools and 85 million students. Each counsellor will be supported by an AI-assisted screening tool that flags at-risk students based on attendance, academic performance, and periodic wellness surveys without disclosing individual data to teachers or administrators. The programme also introduces a structured peer support framework called Saathi Mitra, training senior students as first-responders to mental health concerns among their peers. Pilot data from 1,200 schools showed a 38% reduction in dropout rates and a 29% reduction in bullying incidents among schools with active counselling programmes. UNICEF and the World Health Organisation co-funded the programme architecture design.