History of SHARE Society:

The SHARE (Service for Health and Rural Education) Society was registered 01st June 1993 under Societies registration act 1860. Although SHARE was started by Dr. Led Lankester in 1985 to make “HEALTH FOR ALL” a reality for the people living in the remote villages of the Tehri Garhwal district of Himalayas.  Ever since under different leaderships the project came into service, the emphasis has been to provide primary medical assistance and health education to the needy and suffering people. SHARE made a complete shift of its project location from Janupur block of Tehri Garhwal to Chinyalisaur block of Uttarkhasi district in 2005. With this change a paradigm shift was considered in order to make the communities self-reliant and self-sustaining through Cooperatives therefore SHARE focused on the formation of Health Co-operatives to ensure better health at the community level by the people, for the people and of the people to ensure sustainable development.

SHARE moved to Seohara block of Bijnor district, Uttar Pradesh in 2007 under the efficient leadership of Mr. David Abraham after serving Tehri Garhwal and Uttarkhasi districts more than 20 years and same time in the plain regions it was entirely different challenges with compare to hilly regions however SHARE successfully started its community health & development project in this new area where no voluntary agency is working to address the health & development issues.

SHARE started community based mental health programmes in Bijnor district in 2014 and the programmes kept operating from Seohara as per its strategic location. The mental health programmes’ benefits even reached out to the nearby districts where communities ensured their participation within the programmes.

Current Programme of SHARE Society:

SHARE Mental Health Programme:

Mental health is the foundation for well-being and effective functioning for an individual and for a community, therefore the SHARE primarily focused to raise the awareness on mental health problems, reduce the stigma & discrimination of the communities, identification of mentally ill people both common and severe mental disorders of Seohara block of Bijnor district, Uttar Pradesh especially faced by poor and marginalized people of the community as they do not have access to correct/unbiased information or counselling on mental health issues. 75% of mentally ill patients live in villages, where access even to basic health care is difficult.  People end up spending huge amounts of money for mental health conditions. Large families among Harijan, Other Backward Class and Minority group (Muslim) communities are another manifestation of this, therefore in 2013 SHARE taken up new initiatives in the domain of Mental Health[1] with the focus of community based mental health and development programme. SHARE didn’t take this new programme at sudden of point rather prepared the ground in 2012 as of carried out mental health need assessment study in the communities.

Summary of SHARE mental health programme: 

  1. SHARE has successfully mobilized the communities to have mental health programme in Bijnor district.
  2. In initial phase, SHARE developed the working relation on mental health with ASHAs workers, Aganwadi workers, ANMs, rural health care providers, CBOs        leaders and volunteers.   
  3. SHARE mental health programmes have been reached to 06 block of Bijnor district comprising of 156+ villages.
  4. SHARE has now 03 years of experience of conducting mental health activities in the communities including rural and urban, recourse developments, networking etc.
  5. SHARE awareness programmes resulted into the identification of mentally ill people from the communities by overcoming of stigma and discrimination.
  6. SHARE so far identified 1170+ mentally ill people from the communities.
  7. SHARE has developed the referral system with Govt. Mental Hospital Bareilly which is about 150 kms from project location and so far 115 organized trips have been taken place to the mental hospital in which new patients and old patients included and the treatment gaps have been reduced by SHARE  
  8. SHARE has developed the data bank of mentally ill patients of common and severe mental disorders. SHARE has large number of Epilepsy and schizophrenia cases.

SHARE has been working on youth resilience programme among adolescents both girls and boys groups in schools/colleges with the partnership of CORSTONE foundation India. CORSTONE provide technical support  to SHARE to run resilience programme in Bijnor district. Technical support comprising of training for master trainer, programme facilitators, resources, teaching module, data analysis and monitoring. Last year formed 16 groups of adolescents and this year 44 groups of adolescents.

 [1] Mental disorders are a major cause of illness both globally and throughout India. About 14% of the global burden of disease is attributed to neuropsychiatric illness (Prince et al, 2007, WHO 2011, Patel et al 2007). Common mental disorders that are found in all communities include depression, alcohol use disorder and anxiety disorders. Mental health is a hugely neglected are in health, and in all Low and Middle Income countries there are very high rates of under-presentation, under-diagnosis and under-treatment (Patel,V 2007 and WHO 2007).