Policy Update
Sneha Kohli
Background
National Suicide Prevention Strategy (NSPS) was launched by Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) in December 2022. The goal of the programme is to reduce suicide mortality by 10% by 2030. (Press Information Bureau [PIB], 2025). The strategy recognizes suicide as an important public health concern therefore intervening through crisis management and mental health promotion.
In India, suicide has become the number one cause of death among those aged 15-29 years, exceeding deaths due to road traffic accidents and maternal mortality, among men and women respectively. India’s contribution to global suicides increased from 25.3% in 1990 to 36.6% in 2016 among women (one in three women dying from suicide across the world, is from India), and from 18.7% to 24.3% among men (one in four men dying from suicide across the world, is from India). More than one lakh (one hundred thousand) lives are lost every year to suicide in our country. (Ministry of Health & Family Welfare [MoHFW], 2022)
The legal framework also marked an important shift in India’s approach to suicide prevention. Section 115 of the Mental Healthcare Act, 2017 presumes a person attempting suicide to be under severe stress and limits the application of criminal liability, thereby signalling a shift from a punitive to a public-health-oriented approach. This legislative change provided an important policy context for subsequent efforts towards structured suicide prevention, including the National Suicide Prevention Strategy (NSPS), launched in 2022.
The Economic Survey of India, 2025-26 also highlights the growing Suicide Death Rates(SDR) across different states and districts raising mental health concerns:
Suicide Death Rate within district inter-connectedness
Source: Economic Survey of India, 2025-26
The high burden of suicides in India calls for an effective strategy to bring down suicide related deaths in India which in turn will reduce the global suicide deaths. Hence, the National Suicide Prevention Strategy was launched in 2022.
The following are the objectives laid for the programme: (MoHFW, 2022)
- Provide suicide prevention services, work place stress management, life skills training and counselling in schools and colleges.
- Provide mental health services including prevention, promotion and long-term continuing care at different levels of district healthcare delivery system.
- Augment institutional capacity in terms of infrastructure, equipment and human resource for mental healthcare.
- Promote community awareness and participation in the delivery of mental healthcare services.
The timeline of the strategy is to achieve its objectives till 2030. The programme classifies its different action frameworks across three timeline categories as immediate, intermediate and long term.
- Immediate (1–3 years): Advocating for responsible media reporting, reducing access to pesticides, and strengthening surveillance.
- Intermediate (4–7 years): Integrating mental health services into general healthcare and strengthening training for helpline workers.
- Long-term (8–10 years): Including mental well-being curricula in educational institutions and increasing community-based psychosocial support.
The target beneficiaries of the plan can be classified through its multi-sectoral plan and priority map as given below:
Priority Areas of the National Suicide Prevention Strategy
Source: National Suicide Prevention Strategy report, published by MoHFW, 2022
Functioning
The policy operates through the following framework of REDS (Bhatia et al., 2024):
- R: Reinforce leadership, partnerships, and institutional capacity.
- E: Enhance the capacity of health services to provide prevention services.
- D: Develop community resilience and societal support.
- S: Strengthen surveillance and evidence generation.
The institutional framework of the National Suicide Prevention Strategy envisions five key stakeholders responsible for realizing the objectives outlined. These include: National Level Ministerial Stakeholders, State Level Governmental Stakeholders, District Level Governmental Stakeholders, NIMHANS, Bangalore & other apex mental health institutes, and Strategic Collaborators. (MoHFW, 2022)
At the district level, District Mental Health Committees (DMHCs) and local Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) play an important operational role in translating the NSPS into community-level interventions by facilitating outreach, awareness, early identification, crisis intervention and referral through coordination with district and sub-district health systems. PRIs further support community mobilisation and local stakeholder engagement, enabling suicide-prevention measures to be adapted and implemented according to local needs.
Structure of Implementation of NSPS
Source: National Suicide Prevention Strategy report, published by MoHFW, 2022
The implementation mechanism of the National Suicide Prevention Strategy (NSPS) adopts a multisectoral, whole-of-government approach, recognising that suicide cannot be addressed solely through the health sector. Responsibilities are distributed across ministries dealing with health, education, agriculture, women and child development, labour, information and broadcasting, youth affairs, and home affairs. Its four objectives focus on strengthening institutional capacity, expanding suicide-prevention services, building community resilience and reducing stigma, and improving surveillance and evidence generation.
The framework combines preventive and health-system interventions, including restricting access to means such as pesticides, promoting responsible media reporting, integrating suicide prevention into schools and workplaces, training frontline workers, expanding mental-health services, and strengthening data systems. While this broad institutional approach enables suicide prevention to be integrated across policy domains, the dispersed allocation of responsibilities may create coordination and accountability challenges. Therefore, the effectiveness of the NSPS depends on translating its extensive action points into adequately resourced, coordinated, and monitored interventions at the state and local levels.
As of the current evidence, the NSPS appears to be in an intermediate stage of implementation: institutional and programme-level initiatives have expanded through existing programmes and sector-specific interventions, but evidence of coordinated, adequately resourced, systematic, nationwide and independently evaluated implementation remains limited. (Ransing et al., 2023) The continued emphasis on implementation research, including Mehrotra et al.’s (2025) multisite study, indicates that translating the Strategy’s broad policy commitments into context-sensitive interventions at the institutional and community levels remains an ongoing process.
Performance
The development of NSPS and positive performance can be drawn on the basis of an Unstarred question asked to the Ministry of Health and Family welfare, dated 2023 which notes that psychiatric OPDs (Outpatient Departments) had been sanctioned and approved across 716 districts under the District Mental Health Programme (DMHP). This plan includes the North-Eastern states as well. (Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, 2023)
To assist NSPS objectives, the government of India also launched TeleMANAS (Tele Mental Health Assistance and Networking Across States, National Tele Mental Health Programme) on 10th October 2022, establishing over 36 TeleMANAS cells across 25 states and UTs. (Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, 2023) The Economic Survey of India, re-establishes the importance of mental health programmes like TeleMANAS and NSPS displaying the prevalent suicide death rates accross the nation. (Economic Survey of India, 2025-26)
However, if we analyse the performance of the mental health programmes undertaken by the government of India under NSPS on the basis of manpower and taskforce, it indicates a consistent failure to build the backbone of the policy. (Aksithanand et al., 2024) The table below supports this claim that India faces a significant shortfall of mental health professionals, including psychiatrists and clinical psychologists, compared to the growing demand for mental healthcare services. Addressing this shortage is crucial to improving our country’s mental health support and services. This shortage is further compounded by a pronounced urban–rural disparity, with mental health professionals and specialised services disproportionately concentrated in urban areas, leaving rural and underserved populations with considerably limited access to care.
Scenario of mental health professionals in India
Source: Aksithanand, K. J., Mishra, A., Santra, S., & Banerjee, B. (2024). Review of National Suicide Prevention Strategy and other suicide prevention initiatives in India. National Board of Examination Journal of Medical Sciences, 2(5), Pg: 496
Hence, the overall performance of NSPS can be analysed through the following SWOC (Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities and Challenges) analysis:
SWOC Analysis
Source: Aksithanand, K. J., Mishra, A., Santra, S., & Banerjee, B. (2024). Review of National Suicide Prevention Strategy and other suicide prevention initiatives in India. National Board of Examination Journal of Medical Sciences, 2(5), Pg: 498
Impact
The impact of the NSPS remains difficult to establish conclusively, as its principal outcome target, a 10% reduction in suicide mortality by 2030, has not yet been demonstrated. Although the government reports (2024) expansion of supporting mechanisms, including DMHP coverage across 767 districts and 53 Tele-MANAS cells, these primarily indicate improvements in service availability rather than measurable reductions in suicide mortality. The latest NCRB (National Crime Records Bureau) data provide a mixed picture: the suicide rate declined marginally from 12.4 per lakh in 2022 to 12.3 in 2023, but remained substantially above the 11.3 recorded in 2020, the NSPS baseline year.
However, NCRB figures may not fully capture the actual burden of suicide, as persistent social stigma and under-reporting can contribute to the underestimation of cases, thereby affecting the interpretation of headline mortality trends. Recent scholarship consequently cautions against interpreting programme expansion as evidence of policy impact, while highlighting persistent regional disparities and the need to strengthen surveillance and implementation. Earlier policy reviews similarly identified gaps in human resources, financing, coordination and implementation capacity, consistent with the limitations identified in the present analysis. Thus, while the NSPS has contributed to greater institutional attention and expansion of suicide-prevention infrastructure, there is currently insufficient evidence to conclude that it has achieved its core mortality-reduction objective.
Emerging Issues
The following are the major issues in the National Suicide Prevention Strategy:
- Budget allocation: NSPS lacks an independent budget allocation by the Ministry of Finance, Government of India. NSPS is integrated under the Mental Health Programmes broadly by MoHFW in the annual financial statement. Seeing the suicidal prevalence in the nation, suicide becomes a major public concern and such a financial constraint raises issues about its proper implementation.
- Lack of coordination: Due its multi-sectoral approach and engagement of several priority stakeholders, the policy faces a lack of coordination. This creates issues around accountability and responsibility.
- Social stigma and lack of awareness: Mental Health concerns in India remain a social stigma. Inadequate amount of awareness about mental health support will lead to the failure of effective implementation of such policies. It will fail to reach its target beneficiaries.
- Human resource constraint: Persistent manpower shortages reflect significant human resource constraints within the mental health sector, particularly in government hospitals and public mental health services. The sector is further affected by the migration of mental health professionals towards private-sector opportunities, contributing to the continued inadequacy of human resources within public services. (Aksithanand et al., 2024)
- Decentralized implementation: The programme faces a monitoring and evaluation gap. Due to its decentralized implementation mechanism there is a lack of a centralised supervising agent to monitor the evaluation and outcome of the NSPS.
- Lack of digitalisation and data: The weak surveillance structure further leads to data and accessibility gaps. Lack of data sources is a concern due to improper integration of the programme with the digitalized platform.
Way Forward
National Suicide Prevention Strategy was established for a major public mental health concern and it addresses the SDG 3 of the sustainable developmental goals supporting good health and holistic well being of an individual. To attain its objectives by 2030, the following policy recommendations are important for overcoming the current challenges and emerging issues:
- Ensure better and sustained funding: A dedicated and adequate financial allocation should support suicide-prevention interventions, particularly for strengthening infrastructure, human resources and community-based services. Funding should also ensure that interventions reach underserved populations. A dedicated, ring-fenced budget line under the National Health Mission (NHM) should be considered to ensure predictable and sustained financing for suicide-prevention interventions, including infrastructure, human resources and community-based services.
- Strengthen inter-sectoral coordination: Given the multi-sectoral nature of the NSPS, clearer roles, responsibilities and accountability mechanisms should be established among ministries, state governments and district-level stakeholders. A stronger coordinating mechanism can help ensure that the different components of the Strategy are implemented in a cohesive manner.
- Strengthen mental-health workforce and training: Workforce training should be expanded for mental-health professionals as well as non-specialist health workers, teachers, community stakeholders and other frontline personnel. Building institutional capacity in terms of both the quantity and quality of manpower is essential for effective service delivery. Peer-support and gatekeeper training should also be formalised across colleges and high-pressure coaching hubs to equip students, educators and other frontline peers with the skills to identify warning signs, provide initial support and facilitate timely referrals.
- Improve mental-health awareness and reduce stigma: Awareness campaigns should be strengthened to promote mental health, encourage help-seeking behaviour and reduce the social stigma surrounding suicide and mental illness. Community participation should be encouraged so that suicide-prevention services become more accessible and inclusive.
- Improve surveillance, data and monitoring: Mental-health and suicide surveillance systems should be strengthened through better data collection, integration and monitoring. A centralised mechanism for tracking implementation and outcomes can improve accountability and enable evidence-based policy decisions.
- Expand digital and community-based mental-health services: Digital mental-health initiatives such as Tele-MANAS should be further strengthened alongside community-based psychosocial support. This can improve access to mental-health services, particularly for populations that remain underserved by conventional healthcare systems. Tele-MANAS can be operationally integrated with local emergency response systems, including the 112 emergency helpline and district ambulance services, to enable timely crisis handoffs and emergency referrals where required.
- Promote research and independent evaluation: Greater research activity is required to assess the effectiveness of NSPS interventions across different regions and population groups. Independent evaluation of implementation and outcomes can help identify gaps and guide evidence-based improvements in the Strategy.
Overall, India has made a significant beginning by giving suicide prevention greater political and policy attention. The journey towards inclusive and accessible mental-health services remains ongoing, and a whole-of-society approach is essential to translate the Strategy’s policy commitments into measurable improvements in suicide prevention.
References
Abhijita B, Gnanadhas J, Kar SK, Cherian AV and Menon V. The NCRB Suicide in India 2022 Report: Key Time Trends and Implications. Indian J Psychol Med. 2024;46(6):606–607 https://doi.org/10.1177/02537176241240699
Aksithanand, K. J., Mishra, A., Santra, S., & Banerjee, B. (2024). Review of National Suicide Prevention Strategy and other suicide prevention initiatives in India. National Board of Examination Journal of Medical Sciences, 2(5), 493–499. https://doi.org/10.61770/NBEJMS.2024.v02.i05.009
Bhatia, G., Pal, A., Sharma, P., & Parmar, A. (2024). India’s National Suicide Prevention Strategy, 2022: A critical appraisal. Indian Journal of Social Psychiatry, 40(3), 311-316. https://doi.org/10.4103/ijsp.ijsp_97_23
Mehrotra, S., Duggal, C., Rustagi, N., Ransing, R. S., Indu, P. S., Chakraborty, S., Mene, T., Sharma, P., Prasad, D., Prinja, S., Verma, P., Dhamija, R. K., Kataria, K., Munivenkatappa, M., Suthar, N., Anilkumar, T. V., Dahiya, N., & Grover, A. (2025). Multistate study on suicide risk reduction and improving mental well-being among school and college students in India—an implementation research study protocol. Frontiers in Public Health, 13, 1708246. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/public-health/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2025.1708246/full
Ministry of Finance, Department of Economic Affairs. (2026). Economic survey 2025–26. Government of India. https://indiabudget.gov.in/economicsurvey/index.php?hl=en-IN
Ministry of Health & Family Welfare. (2022). National suicide prevention strategy. Government of India. https://mohfw.gov.in/sites/default/files/National%20Suicide%20Prevention%20Strategy.pdf
Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. (2023, February 10). National suicide prevention strategy (Lok Sabha Unstarred Question No. 1507). Government of India. https://www.sansad.in/getFile/loksabhaquestions/annex/1711/AU1507.pdf?source=pqals
Press Information Bureau. (2025, February 7). Advancing mental healthcare in India. Government of India. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2100706&lang=2®=48
Press Information Bureau. (2025, September 10). World suicide prevention day: Hope beyond despair: Preventing suicide together. Government of India. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressNoteDetails.aspx?ModuleId=3&NoteId=155178&id=155178&lang=2®=48
Ransing, R., Arafat, S. M. Y., Menon, V., & Kar, S. K. (2023). National Suicide Prevention Strategy of India: Implementation challenges and the way forward. The Lancet Psychiatry, 10(3), 163–165. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2215-0366(23)00027-5
UPSC IAS Exam Portal. (2022, December). National suicide prevention strategy. https://iasexamportal.com/the-gist/pib-national-suicide-prevention-strategy
About the Contributor
Sneha Kohli is a third-year B.A. (Hons.) Political Science student at Jesus and Mary College, University of Delhi. She has a keen interest in public policy, governance, and policy research, with prior experience in research projects, policy analysis, and academic writing. She values curiosity, critical thinking, and collaborative learning, and looks forward to contributing to and learning from IMPRI’s research ecosystem.
Acknowledgment
The author extends sincere gratitude to the IMPRI team for their expert guidance and to Amrutha Kolluru and Anushree Khare for their valuable feedback and support.
Publisher: Pallavi Lad
Disclaimer: All views expressed in the article belong solely to the author and do not necessarily represent the views or policies of the organisation.
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