Independent (Bhawna Sharma)

Bhawna Sharma is a psychotherapist and mental health systems practitioner with over nine years of experience across clinical, academic, and program leadership roles in India. Trained at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, she works at the intersection of psychotherapy, community mental health, and systems innovation. Her work spans individual therapy, national-level program design, and cross-sector training- with a strong emphasis on relational, trauma-informed, innovative and context-responsive mental health care. She has led adolescent mental health programs as the former Program Lead for Project SIMHA (TISS), co-designed communication training for clinicians at Tata Medical Centre, and served as a human factors trainer for safety-critical teams through Maersk Training. She currently serves on the Ethics Committee of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), A&N Islands. Bhawna is especially interested in reimagining mental health systems beyond clinics through practitioner training, digital interventions, and community-rooted psychosocial care. Her research has been presented at international platforms like the Royal College of Psychiatrists (UK) and the World Association for Psychosocial Rehabilitation, with a focus on access, safety, and the lived experiences of caregivers, clinicians, and minority populations. She has collaborated with academic institutions, nonprofits, and government bodies across India, and is currently building a social-impact initiative that aims to equip service users and mental health professionals with the tools, language, and support structures needed to access & work systemically, sustainably, and ethically in low-resource settings. Her mission is to make credible, collaborative, and culturally-rooted mental health services more accessible and equitable-especially for communities often left out of the mainstream mental health narrative. Her vision is to build an ecosystem of care in South Asia that integrates mental health with education, leadership, and community development- where healing is not only individual but collective, relational, and rooted in justice.