Mental health during Covid: How patients coped with India's plagued system

"The Covid-19 crisis did not create new shortcomings," said Pathare of CMHLP. "The crisis laid bare the existing shortcomings that have plagued the mental health system for years"

For 14 years, Meenakshi Raman (name changed) had been taking her younger sister, 46-year-old Shruti (name changed), for treatment to the Institute of Human Behaviour and Allied Sciences (IHBAS) in New Delhi once a month. The sisters would spend the better part of the day there for Shruti’s treatment, occupational therapy and counselling for obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) with bipolar affective disorder and traits of borderline personality disorder.

Their monthly routine was abruptly halted in March with the outbreak of COVID-19 and the subsequent lockdown. Shruti’s OCD symptoms and compulsive behaviours worsened