In a factory outside Gazipur, a 19-year-old operator once told a counsellor from SAJIDA Foundation, “Apa, my hands don’t shake because of the machines. They shake because of what I am carrying inside my chest.” She was not alone. Across Bangladesh, countless people carry their struggles silently — unseen in policy and uncounted in national conversations.
The country is living through an age of compound crises. Rapid urbanisation, climate disruptions, economic transitions, and disasters are colliding with something silent yet destructive — psychological distress. Beneath every migration story or workplace burnout, statistic lies an unspoken layer of mental strain. Yet mental health has long remained an afterthought in Bangladesh’s development discourse. The neglect has a cost: families suffer, productivity drops, and the most vulnerable slip to the margins.
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SAJIDA Foundation chose to invest in mental health. Its philosophy is simple yet radical — dignity is impossible without mental wellbeing.
CEO Zahida Fizza Kabir believes mental health must be a system woven through health, social protection, and enterprise. SAJIDA built a continuum of care stretching from community helplines to advanced clinical facilities. This led to the creation of SHOJON, a tele-mental health platform connecting individuals with trained professionals via phone and digital channels, normalising help-seeking behaviour.
At the clinical end, Psychological Health and Wellness Care (PHWC) emerged as a pioneering one-stop facility combining psychiatrists and psychologists under one roof for individual, family, and group counselling.
Complementing this is The HUB—SAJIDA’s Neuroscience & Psychiatry Hub—offering assessment, diagnosis, and treatment in a nurturing environment. For children with special needs, Inner Circle Private Limited (ICPL) provides Bangladesh’s first certified early intervention centre offering ABA, occupational, and speech therapies aligned with global standards.
SAJIDA’s Proshanti programme, recognised by the WHO South-East Asia Regional Office, offers community-based supported living for people with chronic mental illness, helping them rebuild skills and reintegrate into society—a regional milestone in community psychiatry.
As climate threats intensify, SAJIDA has linked mental wellbeing with environmental stress through its Community Mental Health Initiative (CMHI), supporting climate-vulnerable communities and addressing emerging issues such as adolescent distress, workplace burnout, and climate anxiety.
To bridge the shortage of mental health professionals, SAJIDA, in partnership with India’s Banyan Academy of Leadership in Mental Health (BALM) and Dhaka University, developed a six-month course in Community Mental Health Care to train non-specialists in ethical, person-centred support.
Its partnerships span public hospitals, universities, development partners, and private enterprises. SAJIDA’s helplines are referenced by UN Women, its counselling services are embedded in hospitals, and its research collaborations are shaping data-driven policy reform.
Over the next five years, SAJIDA plans to expand investments in technology-driven solutions, women and youth mental health, and community resilience.
If Bangladesh is to move from crisis to care, from neglect to dignity, mental health must be placed at the centre of national development. SAJIDA has drawn the roadmap. The question is whether the rest of us will follow its lead.
The writer is a journalist. E-mail: [email protected]