Our Approach
Mental health in India is largely framed through pathology, treating distress as an individual failure rather than a response to caste, gender, disability, and structural violence. Our organisation exists to challenge this model.
Our mission
Our mission is to build accessible, anti-oppressive mental health care through practitioner training and supervision, affordable psychotherapy, community-based programs, and research grounded in decolonial and liberation-focused frameworks.
Our vision
Our vision is a mental health ecosystem where care is community-rooted, led by lived experience, and capable of supporting collective well-being amid ongoing social and ecological crises.
Services Offered
Our counselors offer space and presence for the unfolding of human experience. We provide:
- One-on-one counseling and psychotherapy
- Group counseling
- Family and couples counseling
- Counseling for children
- Community Support
These services are available at Pause for Perspective in Kundan Bagh, Begumpet, Hyderabad, and online via Google Meet/Zoom . We also collaborate with various institutions and organizations nationwide.
Therapeutic Approach
Our approach combines multiple counseling and therapy modalities:
- Mindfulness-Based Approaches
- Narrative-Informed Therapy
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
- Existential Therapy
- Solution-Focused Brief Therapy
- Client-Centered Therapy
- Psychodynamic Psychotherapy
These modalities are grounded in deconstructing dominant discourses and working within social justice models that consider intersectionalities and their impact on mental health.
Commitment to Social Justice
We strive to ground in anti-caste practice. We place Mad Studies and Neurodiversity at the core of our understanding. We are grateful for the Narrative Practices perspective and the Embodied Social Justice approach that shape our work. We listen to lived experiences and interpret lives and bodies as platforms for liberation, protest, and resistance.
Impact of Oppression on Mental Health
Casteism, patriarchy, cis heteronormativity, ableism, neuronormativity, and Islamophobia impact mental health in our world more than ever. Our mission is to foster communities of care and solidarity, guided by the belief that “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.” This commitment is central to our work at Pause.
Continuous Learning
We recognize our stance and vision with humility and openness to learn. As Adrienne Marie Brown states in “Emergent Strategy,” we believe, “We will not wait to be perfect, because we believe the time is now and we would rather be held accountable for our mistakes than forgiven our inaction.”