India's mental health budget 2025 needs urgent reform

Abstract

As the world's most populous democracy, India's financial commitments to public health care, particularly mental health care, should be reflected in meaningful budgetary allocations. However, although the 2025–26 Union Budget of the Government of India offers an overall increase in health-care funding, the budget for mental health remains dishearteningly low, with a mere 1·05% of the total health budget allocated to mental health.1 The continuation of this poor investment evidences the paucity of political will to treat mental health services as an essential component of the country's health-care infrastructure.