Mental healthcare call centre in Srinagar receives over 10,000 calls

About 70 per cent of the 10,000-odd calls made to a mental healthcare call centre here were by women, with a study suggesting the digital facility has made it easy for women to talk about their issues from home without being stigmatised.

The call centre under the central government's Tele MANAS initiative was established at the Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences in Rainawari here in November last year.

Since its launch, the call centre has received more than 10,000 calls. "About 70 per cent of those calls were from women," Dr Arshad Hussain, a renowned psychiatrist working at the institute, told PTI.

He said the institute conducted a study to ascertain why a majority of the distress calls were made by women.

"What could be happening is that women may be finding it easy to call from their homes and talk about their distress without being stigmatised," Hussain said.

"Recently, we had a guest faculty here. We were told that in other centres, there are more men calling. This