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

When psychiatrist Lakshmi Vijayakumar first floated the idea of starting Sneha, an organisation to prevent suicides in February 1986, 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, probably one of the few such in India, it has handled over 1.5 million phone calls apart from walk-ins, emails and chats, and has not only prevented suicides, but has advocated for, raised awareness about and built support structures around prevention and help for those in distress.

Dr. Lakshmi Vijayakumar, Founder/Trustee of SNEHA, Centre for Suicide Prevention in Chennai
| Photo Credit:
K_V_SRINIVASAN

How did it come about? Early on, says Dr. Lakshmi, she realised that suicides in India were very different from what medical students learnt in their textbooks. It was while presenting a paper on this subject at a of the International Association for Suicide Prevention in Vienna in 1983 that she met Vanda Scott, then coordinator, Befrienders International, an international network of help centres. It was conversations with Ms. Scott about the work that the Samaritans, U.K., a voluntary organisation for the prevention of suicide was doing, and a visit to the U.K. to see this work first-hand, that inspired Dr. Lakshmi to start a similar service in Chennai.

The journey

“No one was willing to give us premises to rent,” says Dr. Lakshmi. “They would hear the words organisation and suicide and shy away.” Finally pointed to a dilapidated building that hadn’t been occupied in years and after cajoling the elderly landlord into renting it to them, the first purchases the newly-birthed NGO made were a pail, a broom and a duster.

Then came the crucial task of selecting volunteers, a process that the NGO still takes very seriously. Sneha put out an advertisement asking: “Are you ordinary enough to be a volunteer?” People began writing in, and after being scrutinised, were taken in. “We are very choosy about our volunteers. Every time we put out a call, we receive between 100 and 200 applications, but we select perhaps nine or 10. This is not because the other candidates are not good, but because we are looking for something special in a volunteer — they must be non-judgemental and empathetic, but must also remain calm, and importantly, must have an unconditional acceptance of other human beings,” Dr. Lakhshmi explains.

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.

Mr. Anand was in college when he first encountered extreme distress — a senior had died by suicide. “I was shocked and confused,” he remembers. Years later, when he saw an ad by Sneha calling for volunteers, he pitched in. The egalitarian, non-hierarchical set up at the organisation, with volunteers from different socio-economic backgrounds is what makes it effective, he believe.

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.

Testament to their service is clear: there has not been a single day over the past four decades when Sneha has not received a call. And apart from two days during the 2015 Chennai floods and two weeks during the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown, there has not been a single day it has not remained open.

The hurdles for the fledgling organisation, however were several. Funds was one. Even though the volunteers were not paid, rent and other costs had to be dealt with. An initial ₹20,000 given by well-wisher and now president of Sneha, industrialist Nalli Kuppuswami Chetti, ran out in six months and obtaining more was a Herculean task. A fundraising concert of renowned singer Yesudhas and another ₹20,000 donated by actor Rajinikanth helped for the next several months until the organisation found its feet.

Beyond a helpline

Sneha has not stopped at being a helpline, even though this forms a core component of its work. The volunteers have gone above and beyond talking on the phone to a person in distress. Dr. Lakshmi recounts the case of a young woman calling from Assam, stating she would jump from the train she was on. Volunteers stayed on the call with for five hours, getting her through each station the train stopped at, until it stopped at a station where they were able to organise help.

More than that however, the NGO has been on a committed path to both change through advocacy and building resilience in the community through training. Awareness programmes — which are held at least once every month — have spanned schools, colleges, vigilance homes, hospitals and armed services. Community-based interventions have been numerous — 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 refuge camp in Tamil Nadu. At the refugee camp near Tiruchi, Sneha trained 15 residents on how to identify, communicate with and support persons in distress, while NGO staff visited every month to troubleshoot and supervise. “At the end of one year, our assessment showed that rates of depression, suicidal ideation and suicide had decreased,” Dr. Lakshmi says. The model, she adds, was later taken up by the UN refugee agency, UNHCR and adapted for refugee camps across the world.

A recent initiative 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.

The NGO has also advocated for change, both on the ground, and in policy. After singer Nithyasree’s husband died by suicide after jumping into the Adyar River from Kotturpuram bridge in December 2012, there were several other suicides from the same spot over the next year. Sneha approached the Chennai Corporation then, to increase the height of the bridge’s walls. The Corporation agreed, and following this, over the next 10 years. Dr. Lakshmi points out, there was only one such death by suicide. Similarly, an initiative to ensure that all pesticides were stored centrally in a two villages in T.N. helped decrease suicides, the NGO found. “Access is a huge factor. Reducing access helps reduce suicides,” says Dr. Lakshmi.

Two major changes that Sneha advocated for, helped herald policy shifts. One was the introduction of supplementary examinations in schools, to give children who had failed another attempt. Exam suicides, says Dr. Lakshmi, have dropped from 4.5% to 2% in the under-18s. Tamil Nadu’s model of supplementary exams, has since been adopted by other States. The other major push Sneha advocated for, was to decriminalise attempted suicide, with this finally being recognised in the Mental Healthcare Act, 2017. Dr. Lakshmi was also deputy chair of the taskforce for the National Suicide Prevention Strategy, launched in 2022, which aims to reduce suicide mortality by 10% by 2030. Implementation, however, is yet to fully take off, she says.

“What distinguishes Lakshmi’s work,” says Rakhi Dandona, professor and director, PHFI Injury Prevention Research Centre. Public Health Foundation of India over email, “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.”

What’s changed and what’s not

It began with people walking in. When telephone penetration increased, walk-ins dropped, and call volumes increased. Some years ago, an email service was started as well. When Sneha realised that youngsters now preferred chat to email, a chat service was begun in 2024.

The world has changed, causes of distress have changed, people, as with every new generation, have changed. 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