Crisis is everywhere, but healing is behind a paywall.
Crisis and chaos pervades the world. Some deeply disturbing realities include: Gaza being systematically starved by the Israeli state which continues to block critical humanitarian aid, while Sudan’s civil war has displaced over 9 million people in a horrifying wave of ethnic cleansing. The Democratic Republic of Congo remains ravaged by mining-induced conflicts and the exploitation of child soldiers. In India, Manipur bleeds under state apathy, and Muslim communities live under a regime of constant surveillance.
In stark contrast to such heartbreaking realities, Instagram appears to have taken up the role of a wellness coach, reminding us to focus on self care by its prompts: Have you journalled today? Try breathwork. Healing begins within.
Such is the case with the focus on wellness under capitalism: a hollow aesthetic sold during collapse. A narrative that rebrands calm as a product, healing as a hustle, and self-care as a solo project. Wellness becomes a curated lifestyle, offered through trauma-themed journals, anxiety planners, burnout coaching, and the constant pressure to ‘regulate your nervous system’. It demands that you fix yourself while systems collapse around you. But who actually gets to heal in India? And who is simply told to survive?
Healing Has Always Been Political
Mental health in India is increasingly marketed as self-optimisation in privileged-caste, English-speaking, urban spaces. Therapy becomes a tool to maintain productivity, and is rebranded as mindfulness, burnout management, and emotional hygiene. But for those who have been historically denied dignity, marginalised communities at the receiving end of caste and class privelege, healing is not a luxury or a curated aesthetic; instead, it can only begin with the recognition of their oppression and demands of its redressal.
Studies show that Scheduled Caste and Muslim communities report higher rates of mental distress than dominant-caste Hindus, even after accounting for poverty and access to education. This is not accidental. It reflects how caste and religion operate as generational sites of trauma. However, within the dominant capitalist framework, the mainstream mental health industry tends to individualise suffering, overlooking caste humiliation or communal grief as political injuries that also require empathetic attention. The upper class, capitalist logic of neutrality, which is prominent in the mental health industry, considers everyone to be on a level playing field, thereby neglecting the history of structural violence faced by some. Therefore, it is important to address caste blindness, gender ignorance, and class elitism operating under the garb of neutrality.
Furthermore, in popular media and culture, conversations around mental health issues lack depth and remain merely superficial. An example of this is the aesthetic presentation of trauma. In such discussions of trauma, influencers post softly lit content about inner child work and self-worth, while evading the violence that defines so many lives that experience trauma. Their version of “healing” from trauma rarely addresses structural oppression. Instead, it turns therapy into a brand, healing into a mood board. Not only social media but even mainstream films and television echo this dynamic. Urban, upper-class characters are allowed therapy, redemption arcs, and soft aesthetics of growth. Their breakdowns are humanised. But what of the domestic worker, the queer Dalit student, or the Muslim girl in a state university? Their trauma is either erased or sensationalised. Pop culture treats them as symbols, not subjects. It denies them the right to heal, let alone the space to even vocalise their pain.
While the prevailing capitalist ideas surrounding mental health are discussed so far, the next part focuses on the issue of accessibility of mental health therapies and healing mechanisms, both from the point of view of providers and receivers.
Gatekeeping Healing:
From costing ₹2,000 for a single therapy session to curated healing retreats, wellness is now sold as something you buy. Mental health care is inaccessible for the majority, both geographically and economically. Even sliding-scale therapy models (which are more affordable since the client’s income is taken into consideration while designing the fee structure) often exclude non-English speakers, rural populations, queer and trans people outside metro cities, and minorities living at the intersections of caste, class, religion, and disability.
Yoga is perhaps the most telling example. Once deeply tied to caste-based gatekeeping, it is now a multimillion-dollar industry. But the yoga complex still reflects privilege. Those teaching and profiting from yoga today are often the dominant caste and class elite. The same practices that were historically denied to oppressed-caste people are now commodified without critique, severed from their violent history.
Therefore, in the present day and age, healing is monetised with only the privileged from high classes having a right to both receive and offer it. However, in the few cases where the non-privileged are healers, they are coerced into it. A prominent example of this is the IIT Kharagpur Campus Mother Initiative. The initiative offers a stark example of how wellness is weaponised. The program designated women, primarily from working-class backgrounds, as “mothers” to students; without pay or institutional recognition. This was not care. It was unpaid emotional labour extracted through the language of maternalism. It exemplified how institutions rely on the emotional and social labour of women from marginalised communities, while reserving actual wellness for the privileged.
Therefore, it can be argued that marginalised communities carry a burden no therapist can fully address in isolation. A Dalit woman is told her anger is unproductive, rather than political. A Muslim student grieving violence is seen as disruptive. A queer rural youth cannot even access a therapy space in their language.
Even in so-called inclusive circles, silence around caste and class persists. The savarna progressive therapist who reads Bell Hooks but avoids Ambedkar is still part of the problem. Healing in India often operates in caste bubbles, sustaining elite comfort at the expense of genuine equity.
Community Care is the Alternative
Despite this, resistance continues. Community-led collectives are reclaiming mental health through care work rooted in justice. Groups like The Alternative Story, Blue Dawn, Mariwala Health Initiative, Anjali Mental Health Rights Org, and MAVA India challenge the elitism of therapy. Their work builds healing models that center caste, queerness, language, and access.
This is not healing for productivity or Instagram branding. This is care work that begins with the question: who has been denied rest, safety, and dignity for generations? And how do we build networks of care that do not replicate violence?
These spaces are led by people who understand oppression not as some abstract theory, but as a lived reality. They facilitate grief circles, offer peer support, build multilingual mental health resources, and hold space for rage, resistance and mutual support.
Healing Must Be Structural
The next time you see a wellness ad selling peace through breathwork, ask yourself: who gets to breathe freely? Who pays the cost of calm? Healing cannot be universal until justice is. Care cannot be commodified. Any mental health movement that ignores caste, Islamophobia, ableism, or class violence is not inclusive; rather, it is complicit. In a collapsing world, healing must not be a lifestyle. It needs to be a resistance. It is saying: we deserve to rest, rage, and recover. Together. Without permission. Because healing without justice is branding. And care without community is control.
Jinia Singha Roy is a master’s student in English literature at Visva Bharati Santiniketan.
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