By continuing to visit this site, you accept the use of cookies by Google Analytics for statistical purposes.
Read more
A Simpler Way To Find Help
Towards a National Helpline
We know that it can be hard to reach out for help when you aren’t feeling well, mentally or physically. It is an act of courage and strength to call a helpline to seek support. There are many volunteers who are passionate about providing a space for you to feel heard, understood, and cared for. In our experience doing research in this field and hearing stories from people who have called the line, we have heard that even once you gather the strength to make a call, it can often be quite hard to actually get connected with a line, whether due to a busy tone or the line being unavailable.
To make it easier for you to find help, we have created a unified helpline number for all helplines in Kerala. You can call it at 1-800-212-7077 (in India only). When you call this number and tell us you want to speak to a volunteer, we will check to see which helplines are free, and quickly connect you with to an available helpline. If you would like to provide feedback on your experience, you can call the number back and indicate that you would like to provide feedback by dialing 2, you can email us, or you can submit feedback here.
In the future, we hope to add more numbers to this line, eventually expanding it to become a single number for you to easily find help (in India) when you are not feeling well, regardless of where you might be geographically or what language you may prefer to speak.
Who We Are
This work is part of a collaboration between Befrienders India, Microsoft Research, and me, a PhD student at the Georgia Institute of Technology. We do this work with the hope of making it easier for you to get help when you are feeling distressed. We believe in a future where every person has a caring and supportive community easily accessible to them — a world in which all people can express their emotions safely and freely.
Publications and Media
The work we do is firmly grounded in research-based approaches to work alongside those who have experienced mental illness (or loss as a result of mental illness) to identify needs and do our best to use our capabilities to meet those needs. All publications and media about this project are listed below.