Helping people in distress for 40 years: NGO Sneha’s journey

When she first floated the idea of starting Sneha, an organisation to prevent suicides in February 1986, Lakshmi Vijayakumar says, everyone around her was skeptical. They told her three things: an organisation could not be run only with volunteers; Madras is a conservative society and no one would call for help and it was not possible to prevent suicides only by talking to people. Forty years later, Sneha has proved them all wrong. The NGO is completely volunteer-run, it has handled over 1.5 million phone calls apart from walk-ins, emails and chats, and has not only helped prevent suicides, but has advocated for, raised awareness about and built support structures around prevention and help for those in distress.

A lot of people believe that the volunteers offer counselling, says Anand, who has been a Sneha volunteer since 2012. “But we don’t offer advice or solutions. All we do is listen, offering emotional support to the caller’s pain,” he says. Anonymity and confidentiality, he notes, are the lifeblood of the organisation, along with an abiding belief that the caller knows what is best for them: the volunteer’s job is to be there with them, listening to their feelings.

Sneha has not stopped at being a helpline, says Dr. Lakshmi: the NGO has been committed to both change through advocacy and building resilience in the community through training. Awareness programmes, community-based interventions — notably identifying children in distress after the devastating December 2004 tsunami and developing a model to help them, and setting up CASP (contact and safety planning) systems at a Sri Lankan Tamil refugee camp in Tamil Nadu — have been accompanied by advocacy for action, from raising the height of the Kotturpuram bridge in Chennai to prevent deaths by suicide, to advocating for supplementary exams for students, which T.N. brought in, and for the decriminalisation of suicide attempts, now recognised in the Mental Healthcare Act, 2017.

A recent initiative, notes Dr. Lakshmi, has been Support After Suicide, a support group for loved ones of those who have died by suicide that has two online meetings and one in-person meeting every month.

“What distinguishes Lakshmi’s work,” says Rakhi Dandona, professor and director, PHFI Injury Prevention Research Centre. Public Health Foundation of India, “is an unwavering focus on the people behind the statistics — ensuring that mental health responses to suicide risk are grounded in dignity, compassion, and care. Over many years, her work through Sneha has consistently highlighted the importance of strong mental health systems, from early identification to continuity of support, as central to effective suicide prevention.”

Over the years, many things have changed at Sneha: from walk-ins, to a high number of calls every day, to email, and finally, a chat service that began in 2024. What remains unchanged is the calm, uncritical, and all-accepting voice, text or face — that listens.

Sneha can be reached on the phone +914424640050 from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. on all days, through walk-in visits from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on all days, on email, help@snehaindia.org and on chat from 7 pm to 1 am on all days