Bridging Gaps in Care Ecologies: Knowledge Architecture and Adaptation in Mental Health Care
Project Summary
Bridging Gaps in Care Ecologies: Knowledge Architecture and Adaptation in Mental Health Care This project examines how knowledge is co-created, transmitted, and adapted within mental health care settings for people with psychosocial disabilities and histories of homelessness. Working across The Banyan's Emergency Care and Recovery Centres in Chennai and Bengaluru, the project aims to reimagine traditional epistemic hierarchies by bridging gaps between formal, credentialed knowledge with the tacit, experiential expertise of frontline care providers and service users. Through participatory methods including reflective discussions and sense-making workshops, the project will bring together different ways of knowing, clinical, experiential, and cultural, to shape care that is humane and contextually relevant. Guided by principles of equity (valuing diverse knowledge forms), inclusion (engaging practice-based and lived experience experts as co-creators), and collaboration (fostering reciprocal learning), the project will create a Care Practices Repository capturing collective wisdom to inform responsive and adaptive approaches to mental health care.
Organisation Snapshot
The Banyan & BALM Founded in 1993 in Chennai, The Banyan supports people experiencing homelessness and psychosocial distress on journeys from crisis to health and hope. Working across ten Indian states directly and through a network of twenty-five partners, The Banyan offers comprehensive care including acute care, housing with supportive services, community mental health services, and livelihood initiatives. Established in 2007, BALM (Banyan Academy of Leadership in Mental Health) builds mental health systems through education, research, and social action, training students, peer leaders, and professionals to work at the intersection of mental health and marginalisation. Together, they collaborate with governments, academia, and civil society to advance inclusive, community-rooted mental health care.
Project Team
Lakshmi Narasimhan
Principal Investigator
Lakshmi Narasimhan, Principal Investigator, is a researcher and practitioner working at the intersection of poverty, homelessness, and psychosocial care for the last twenty years. With a background in social work and a transdisciplinary PhD, she is engaged in initiatives that advance justice-oriented care ecologies that prioritise quality of life and social inclusion for people with psychosocial disabilities, agnostic of clinical outcomes. Her work includes co-developing the WHO-recognised Home Again housing with supportive services model and NALAM community mental health services. She is interested in understanding how grassroots knowledge can be centered to build continuously evolving, responsive mental health systems.
Purnima Prakash
Co-Principal Investigator
Purnima Prakash, Co-Principal Investigator, is a senior research associate at Banyan Academy of Leadership in Mental Health and is trained pedagogically in sociology. Her research explores the intersections of urban poverty and mental health, with a particular interest in how care and lived experience of psychosocial distress is conceptualized across different contexts. She is keen on making research more accessible by challenging epistemic hierarchies in knowledge production, dissemination, and gathering. When not immersed in questions of care, Purnima turns to reading and writing existential fiction, or to long walks where she finds comfort in the asymmetry of perfection—a rhythm that mirrors her reflective and creative approach to life.
Aishwariya Ramesh
Senior Research Associate
Aishwariya Ramesh is a Senior Research Associate at the Banyan Academy of Leadership in Mental Health (BALM), where she has been working with questions about systems, distress, and care. With an interdisciplinary background in Computer Science Engineering and Psychology of Mental Health (University of Edinburgh), at BALM, she contributes to research on the community-based mental healthcare model, NALAM. She also likes to engage with music, art, and chaos.
J. Premavathy
Research Associate
J. Premavathy is a Research Associate with Banyan Academy of Leadership in Mental Health. She previously worked as a pharmacist and pharmacy-in-charge with 15+ years across tertiary hospitals and online pharmacy. She led operations at Tagore Medical College & Hospital, Kumaran Hospital, and VSR Hospital, and earlier served at Indian Hospital, Gayathiri Medical Mission, and NetMeds’ verification team. She holds a D.Pharm, BBA, and PG Diploma in Healthcare Management (LIBA). She brings valuable lived experience with homelessness and mental health challenges. Outside work, she enjoys motivational talks, health books, and music.
Kavipriya
Lived-experience Researcher
Kavipriya comes on board as a lived-experience researcher. She battles Bipolar Affective Disorder on a day-to-day basis. She is an experienced learning facilitator with 5+ years in advanced education (IB/IGCSE) and an MBA (HR/Marketing) and her goal is to transition expertise from the classroom to impactful roles within social sciences research. She aims to leverage her interpersonal skills to contribute to evidence-based mental health policy and program evaluation studies.
Sreya Layek
Research Associate
Sreya Layek is a Research Associate with the Banyan Academy of Leadership in Mental Health. She has a background in Masters of Social Work (Public Health) from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. Her interest lies at the intersection of health and social determinants of health with a narrow focus on ageing and mental health. Beyond work, she is an avid reader and a music enthusiast.