South Asian Mental Health Initiative and Network – Our Journey So Far (Part One)

In keeping with PRMS’ mission to support the greater behavioral health community, we invited Vasudev Makhija, MD, DLFAPA, founder and president of the South Asian Mental Health Initiative and Network (SAMHIN), and a past president of the New Jersey Psychiatric Association (NJPA), to share more about SAMHIN’s current projects. PRMS is proud to support SAMHIN’s mission to support mental health awareness and assistance among South Asian communities.

It is hard to believe that it has been ten years since the South Asian Mental Health Initiative and Network (SAMHIN) was launched in 2014. SAMHIN was established as a non-profit, 501(c)(3) organization to address the mental health needs of South Asians in this country. It has grown organically in ways not imagined or predicted initially. The feedback from the community has helped us to organize as well as to add initiatives and programs to meet the mental health needs and promote mental wellness in the South Asian community.

The fact that this is our nonprofit’s tenth year is encouraging and gratifying. What is even more gratifying is knowing we have made a difference and have helped so many individuals and families in the U.S. In 2023, SAMHIN was honored by the American Psychiatric Association Foundation with the Award for Advancing the Minority Mental Health, which provided much-appreciated recognition and validation of our work.

Highlights of SAMHIN’s 2024 Initiatives

• Promoting mental wellness and taking proactive steps for early detection and prevention:

In 2024, SAMHIN conducted 29 outreach events, including community-based mental health screenings, as well as in-person and virtual workshops on suicide prevention and seminars. In addition to presentations by psychiatrists, compelling stories were presented by suicide loss survivors. We partnered with other organizations to expand our reach and engage communities in different locations, such as Jersey City, NJ, where we conducted an in-person workshop on suicide prevention and live-streamed it for those unable to attend. In the past few years, we have led several other workshops through that partnership.

• Addressing Stigma and Poor Mental Health Literacy:

Stigma and poor mental health literacy are two significant barriers to help-seeking and improving mental health care. Workshops help us achieve our important mission to engage and educate our community on issues of mental health and substance use, and decrease stigma. In October 2024, SAMHIN established its presence for the second time at the annual Dassahra festival at the Papaianni Park in Edison, NJ – Dassahra is the Hindu festival celebrating victory of good over evil. About 15,000 people attended that event, and many came to the SAMHIN booth to engage with our team of psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, and other volunteers. In addition to educating the community and addressing issues of stigma, one of the bigger goals was to increase awareness of the new national 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. We discovered that 99 percent of people with whom we talked, including physicians, were not aware of the new 988 number, which launched in July 2022.

In 2024, we also brought two community-based mental health screenings to areas in Queens and Long Island, NY. We engaged the local leadership to foster these opportunities, in addition to building alliances with other organizations in New Jersey.

Some of the presentations during 2024 provided continuing medical education (CME) credits for physicians – for example, I presented to clinicians on “Cultural Compassion: Enhancing Mental Health Care for South Asian Communities” at the Atlantic Health Systems Behavioral Health Grand Rounds.” This talk was followed by an engaging discussion in a focus group, which was a great opportunity to enhance cultural competency among health care providers and improve mental health outcomes for South Asian patients by addressing the unique cultural barriers and fostering a more inclusive and understanding environment.  

I also presented on Model Minority Myth and its impact on mental health care of South Asians to the medical students at Rutgers RWJ Medical School in New Brunswick, NJ.

I teamed up with Dr. Ashok Khushalani, Dr. Sunil Khushalani, and Dr. Steve Sharfstein for a presentation, “The House on Fire: Coping with Mental Illness in Families of Mental Health Providers,” offered as a CME program at the American Psychiatric Association (APA) Annual Meeting in New York, NY. It was there that I also participated in two other CME programs, “Challenges of South Asians in the U.S.: Impact on Help-Seeking and Mental Health Care” and “The Silent Sip: Unmasking Alcoholism in South Asian Communities.”

Lastly, I was invited by the American Association of Physicians from India (AAPI), Medical Student Resident Fellow (MSRF), and AAPI PreMed to speak on mental health within the South Asian community at their annual conference at Rutgers University.

Learn more about all events and activities SAMHIN participated in 2024 on our previous events webpage.

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