Social Work Spotlight - International Episode 4: Selva (India)

Episode Date: October 11, 2025

In this episode I speak with Selva, a psychiatric social worker based in Chennai, India. He works as an Employment Coordinator at the Indian Schizophrenia Research Foundation and his focus is on helping individuals with lived experience of mental illness in their recovery, independence, and social inclusion through supported employment.Links to resources mentioned in this week’s episode:Schizophrenia Research Foundation India - https://scarfindia.org/This episode's transcript can be viewed here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hy3_7eoZZqEQKTdQHjqJoyC55mJns7uuFKNz21VKUCI/edit?usp=sharingThanks to Kevin Macleod of incompetech.com for our theme music.

Before beginning, I wish to acknowledge the traditional owners of the countries of guests featured in this podcast and acknowledge their continuing connection to land, waters and community. I pay my respects to the First Nations people, the cultures and the elders, past, present and emerging. Hi, and welcome to Social Work Spotlight, where I showcase different areas of the profession each episode, with a 12-month focus on social workers around the world as of August 2025. I'm your host, Yasmin Lupus, and today's guest is Selva, a psychiatric social worker based in Chennai, India. He works as an employment coordinator at the Indian Schizophrenic Research Foundation, and his focus is on helping individuals with lived experience of mental illness in their recovery,

independence and social inclusion through supported employment. Hi, Selva, thank you so much for joining me today on the podcast. I'm looking forward to having a chat with you about your experience. experience in social work so far. Hi, Yasmin. Thanks for connecting me in this podcast. Yeah, I'm also very much interested to share about social work experience and the context from Indian perspective.

Yeah, I'd love to know firstly when you got started in social work and what brought you to the profession. Actually, I started my practice during my MSW days from the first semester itself. I had field work and later I had block placements in hospitals. and NGOs as well. Here MSW is two-year program every semester has concurrent field work and then we also do a long block placements like for one month. People from many bachelor degrees are eligible not only as social work graduates. I could be able to implement interventions during my internship days like eyesight when I work in the

hospital settings or NGO settings so I had great exposure under the supervision. So I did counselling and awareness programs and therapies and some group activities and small rehabilitation plants as well. Yeah. And what brought you to the field? Did you know much about social work before you started studying? Did you have any experience or you just thought that kind of aligns with my values and what I want to do? No, I don't have that much experience before I start my journey. Actually, I chose this field because I wanted to work closely with people and support them in their challenges, especially in mental health sectors. So that's why my practice regularly began. In 2020, I have started my social profession. Here, I'm a qualified

psychiatric social worker and working as an employment coordinator in Schizophrenia Research Foundation, India, which is located in Chennai. And was there a point at which, as you started studying, maybe it was when you started doing your internships or maybe even earlier, that you realized, oh, okay, yes, this is a good choice for me. This is the thing I want to do. Yes, internships made me realize this is the right path, working with lived experiences and families and the communities as well. That gave me confidence and direction. Yeah, I worked with NGOs. They are focusing on vulnerable. and marginalized people so i have worked with them and also i have experience with working with cancer

patients and in a psychiatry setting i had a great exposure so that's why i'm working in a psychotic setting as of now so i can share one of the examples like when i work with uh lived experiences of mental health patients i just worked on research aspects as well as the clinical aspects so which gives motivation and the self-confidence and the hope to develop mental health interventions in the mental health settings and also when i had a research experience when i start working with the people so i just got an idea about how the interventions are improving based on the researchers and as well as how we are implementing in the clinical sectors so i got an exposure uh interventions which helps the patients, not only the patients, that also help caregivers to make them understand about the mental health and the peer groups and the social society making them understand about the mental health.

So not only giving awareness, it's all about making them train and making them well to provide support for the people with limited experiences. Not only for focusing on physical disabilities. In India, there is a policy like mental health also comes under a disability. But many people don't consider mental illness as a disability because they can recover whenever. And that is a stigma. They can't do any work and they are not fit for the jobs. And they are not well-functioning people. So we don't hire them for a job.

We don't provide any support for them. They have to get treatment. So like that, they were saying, but we are focusing. on like make them train and make them understand about the mental health what exactly it's not like you think and some of the movie portraying like that so it's not about you think that's totally kind of different thing mental health is a major point like a major factor which we need to focus on more than physical health and when you were working with the people who had mental health concerns did you work just in the hospital or was it in the community setting as well

Yeah, communities I had worked a great experience. Now also I'm working with the community too. Since I'm working as an employment coordinator, I just focus on my field-based experience and I just focus on my clients like meeting them every day and just giving counseling in the vocational aspects and providing interventions and sometimes immediate intervention has to be provided. and the clinical follow as well as the regular follow by the employment team and when it comes to community work will make all the community people understand about the mental health in workplace especially how to adopt mental illness persons with the society and how can we support them to sustain in a society sustain in the job so these are all we're doing and part of the responsibility of social worker. So as a psychiatric social worker, we need to focus on multiple things. That one is

clients' well-being. So clients are lived experiences of mental illness because job is not only a paycheck. It's all about rehabilitating, recovering from the mental illness for the lived experiences. So this has to be addressed among the society and this has to be sensitized among the employers. so then only they can support them and they can accommodate them mental illness people with their workplace it's so important yeah invite all the employers to our organization to have talk with our clients for the experience of mental illness then they can directly meet the candidates and they can talk with them and they will understand the reality so during the conversation they may might know about the lived experience of mentalness, how they are and how they are doing and how

they are well at all. And how long is the social work degree altogether? I'm wondering if it's similar to Australia. We have either a four-year undergraduate degree in which we do internships or you can do a two-year master's degree if you have another related degree before that. We have three years for undergraduate and two years for postgraduate. So MSW, Master of Social Work, and we have another degree, MA in Social Work. So these both degrees can eligible here. And anyone completed any other degree, they are eligible to do MSW. So it's like a cross degree.

So anyone, if one person completed BA English, they can study BMSW. they are eligible. If the person completed max in BAC, they can eligible for MSW. They can apply. So can you do just the bachelor degree, just the three years and work as a social worker, or you do have to have those extra two years? Actually, I completed my Eugene mathematics. So after that, I started exploring new things. Right. Like everyone having. Yeah. So everyone have a wish of helping the people. So same way, I too had a same thought.

But when it comes to MSW, it's not about doing only the service. It's all about the service and the structured interventions and the effective improvement of the specialty. So it's all about professional structure. I imagine that mathematics has come in handy, though, when you're doing research, right? You've been able to apply a lot of that. It helps lots about in research. Especially nowadays when I use SPAS and all, it was very helpful comparing to others.

They are lacking in that particular area. Yeah. So I can help a specialist in that. Yeah. That's amazing. I almost add one more thing. So in the employment exchange cell, we support people with mental health problems to get back into work. So the process started with assessment.

We understand the person's social skills and organization skills and the job readiness and education and Working history then we give occasional counseling if they need sometimes training sometimes coaching for the interviews And another part is analyzing with employers many times employees have doubts stigma So we explain mental health in simple terms and encourage them to give up to live the experience of mental illness. They have many candidates in their workplace. If the person, one person affected from mental health, like depression or anxiety,

they should know how should provide support for them to make them perfect in their job. And by providing some interventions like mindfulness exercises, we do tell them that we provided mindful exercises to reduce depression. reduce depressions and anxiety and in some case they do face fears so we tell the employees that we provide these kind of interventions that will make them support their self and will make them support in the mental health aspects of mental health

this is not always easy but when employees show positive response it feels very rewarding for example once an employee told me your support helped us understand the candidate better and your happy to take them, that feedback gave us encouragement to continue. And the employment experience is not only about giving jobs, it's about restoring self-confidence, dignity and inclusion for clients, which is very much helping in the recovery process. And are there specific fields or types of employment that you find are a bit more receptive to that or a bit more understanding and non-judgmental?

Yeah, in IT sectors, we do face lots of issues. Like, there is no decision makers as an recruiters. So if we convince the recruiter or if we sensitize the recruiters, they do say like our supervisors won't accept this. So in IT sectors, we majorly facing the issues. So we just planned and we just discussed with among our mental health professionals, how can we change some policies, how can we improve the policies, or else we should find, is there any lack of policy implementation?

So when we discussed this, we just started with this finding the lack of implementation in any of IT sectors so that we can work on that and we do target the IT sector, hedgeers, and not only the recruiters, the higher officials, run the organization. So we can focus on that and work on that and we do solve the problems. Yeah. And are there some sectors that are really good and really accepting and open a bit more, like not just IT, but are there places that are doing it really well and taking on board people with lived experience in a really good way?

Yeah, in other sectors, not like an IT sector when we compare to IT sectors, there are lack of implementation of policy levels and other sectors like unorganized sectors. So they do understand the mental health and they do provide opportunity because there are lots of opportunity that are available and the unorganized when it comes to unorganized sectors and the low level jobs like unskilled jobs and the skilled jobs, there are lots of vacancy that are available here. The employers are looking for employees, those who can work. but everyone are completed their degree and every one of the people are even i'm mentioning the normal people

every people are needed their own preferred jobs so that is a lack between joining in the jobs like unskilled jobs and semi-skilled jobs so we chose the jobs and we target that employers and we'll upgrade them and licensing we have licensing with the employees and we do sensitize them we do train them then they will accept it. And yeah, I can't say 100% they will understand that 100% they will accept. But we can say 60, 70% which they do understand. Yeah, nice. And are there then issues with disclosing mental health or mental illness to employers?

I imagine people would want to hold that back then if they thought that they were going to be discriminated against. Yeah, of course. We asked our lived experience people about a disability. the mental health at the workplace, of course there is a stigma of disclosing the mental health. Because here there are lots of stigma, like when we say mental health professional, even though they will think that, oh, you are a mental health from mental health hospital. So there is a stigma like that. So our patients, they don't say like you should disclose my mental health like that.

But some will open to disclose their mental health. We do say employer that they are under treatment and they are in the follow with us and they are recovered. So we use these terms and we don't say the diagnosis that are all concerned with personal details. So personal details won't be shared until the client shares with the employer. We do say yes, of course they are under treatment but they are recovered. We are supporting them. We provide psychological support. we provide clinical supports and we provide social support.

So minimum of six months, we do follow with them as a clinical professional and as a research professionals, we do follow with them with the minimum of six months. Yeah, nice. And what sort of caseload do you have? Do you have a specific number of people or a specific number of employers that you deal with at one time? Yeah, actually weekly price we do visit employers. In a month, we can have a counter-conduct of employers, 20 more people, but among them, very few volunteering for supporting the person with mental illness.

So as of now, we have for one year, we conducted a hundred more people, but we got 60 supported employers, including an unorganized sector. Unorganized sector in the sense small small shops near to their residents and some supermarkets So in that places they will ask for owner more to employees so we do refer them and for large people We do tie up with retail shops and the export government tree and the IT sectors like telecalling So there are lots of people undergoing interview so we do refer them to them to for the job and we have a type with there, not the companies, but the hedgehouse. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And where does your funding come from with the program? Is it a government program

or do you get funding from maybe the IT companies or whoever it is that recruits the professional person? Yeah, it's funding from company, IT companies. So they do fund for this program. And we have in our hospital. We are an NGO actually. We have started a supported employment program to ISB4, a structured program. So we have one dedicated staff to work on it. So even though the fund is end, we'll continue the role. Okay. So I think I understand you've got sort of two different approaches. You've got one of your roles which deals with people who are supported with mental illness in hospital and you're trying to help them with their recovery by supporting their skills and development to find work. And then you've got a separate section of the company that you're

working for that specifically deals with recruiters or recruitment agencies that are trying to get people into these roles and saying how do we go about doing this in a really ethical and supportive way. It's a great thing actually we are doing. Then we have a separate team for this and will follow the model that we made for this location. We are following by registration and the assessment. In that assessment, we do assess their skills, social skills and the cognition skills. So based on these criteria we do provide job matching and some of them are very highly qualified. Of course, they need to get into the job to recover from their mental health issues.

we need to counsel them in the vocational aspects. So the clinical and vocational counseling will be continuously provided for the people who comes to the job like employment exchange health. So this model we are following and after that if they face any relapse, of course there will be dropouts. We can't say everyone are working. So for the drawports, we'll send them back to the consultant for further treatment and we'll observe them.

and the multidisciplinary team will be working. So as a social worker, we should be part of the candidates, our clients' journey in their recovery. And do you have an opportunity to work with their families or support people as well or do you just deal with those clients? Yeah, I had an experience with working with families as well. The vocational counselling involved candidates and their family members and the employers to provide.

way to the holistic support. Yeah, that's perfect. Because if you don't have the rights of board at home, then you're not going to be able to deliver good work at work, right? Yeah, yeah. That's so good. So, yeah, it sounds as though there's such a huge amount of stigma and really difficult language that's being used across the board

in terms of employing people. But through your program, you're able to provide incentives to the employer and initiatives that are helping people to find a, good fit for them, but also to stay in the right job and not drop out and have other problems. Yeah, just there is no other problems because when we ask us the clients, we just talk with our consultant and we will share something, job description about them. Then we'll, we'll discuss. We are for since, consultant and psychologist and social workers, we'll discuss and we'll just ask the candidates that how this is fit for us.

you and we do analyze the transportation is there any issues they will they face or any other issues like in case salary won't be afford to them so in the economic side we do analyze as a social worker we should collaborate with government to provide transportation for specifically person with mental illness sorry person with disabilities they should include lived experiences of mental illness because the major reason is if they want to travel 10 kilometer it will take around 1 or 2 hour if they're traveling by bus in Chennai so it's all about the environment in here so one is the transportation we have to collaborate with government and to work on it we can improve that or specifically for person with mental

illness or organization can if they provide a bus or a a van or any transportation if they provided by the organization only for person with mental illness for the transportation it will help them to not facing any transportation issues to sustain the job so one is that another one is the salary during the interview process they will say i will give you a 20 000 rubies when they join they will see their performance and due to lack of performance they will say i will reduce 4 000 rubies for this month so this will make them stress and this will make them depression. So they will say simply like,

I don't want this job directly without our consultation. So they will say and they will draw out and they will call back and I have resigned the job, please provide another support. So these issues with candidates and if we face any dropout issues, the employer will say please don't refer clients like this because they are not sustaining, we are training them for one month and they are leaving the job after a month. So after that also, we have to train the employer.

We can't say, like, you have to support how you are supporting other. And so in social aspects in video, because some candidates won't work with other people because of lack of social skills. So some people, they want to isolate themselves, but they have to be socialized with other people. So based on these, all criteria, we as a professional we discussed and we place them. So we don't face the huge issues, but sometimes the caregivers won't understand the client's diagnosis and the symptoms.

They just say like he's not doing, he won't do, like that they will get some anger on them. But they should understand it's part of the symptom. That's why they are doing. So we do psychogate them in between jobs. Sometimes they do drop out. because of family issues, you should not go there, you should not go here like that. So we face this kind of issue. Yeah.

In work, I need more support in terms of resources like employer corporations and follow-up services for clients. Sometimes clients are placed in jobs but without proper follow-up, they struggle to continue. So if you have more structured employer partnerships and long-term rehabilitation programs, it will make our work more effective. And do you still do much research within the role you're doing at the moment, or do you not get much of an opportunity now? Yeah, we do research. We have another team. I have done two researchers. So one is the pilot study. We started a supported employment program in the year of 2020. So 256 people have registered there for the employment. Then among them we provided placements 120 and among 120, 60 are still working and 20 people are working for one more years.

So we published there in the journal and another study is about networking, how catered and I work with employees. So it's on process and another review is on process like scoping review about how. sustainability so it's just like how we can make them sustain in a job so we are just looking into how other countries have done interventions in sustainability so we are collecting the data and we are doing them scoping review how this will that will work in our supported employment program because in our employment exchange itself the sustainability is one of the major reason we are facing that. Sure. And if you had time to do more research, are there any other areas of investigation, anything else that you'd like to be looking into if time was not an issue? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course,

if one person registered in employment exchange, the time duration of getting them a job, like in general, we should say like in three months or in six months, we will get you a job. So we're thinking of all kinds of support psychological aspects and almost everything. So we are working on it, the duration. So how can we improve that? And also to sustain, we have started a mentorship program. It's about like we have assigned each for mental health professionals for each candidates for employed. So that weekly once they will call the candidates in their free time and they will ask for what kind of issues you are facing.

how is the work today and this week or this month and how can you able to maintain a sustain a job so we collect that factors for the sustainability for the one week or one month and when it comes to six months we will ask them what are the factors made you to sustain the job and if there are dropouts we'll ask them what kind of reasons or what kind of factors that affected your jobs so this will be asked the collect the factors so this is the based on this basic data will plan for a research study how can we make them sustainable drop so what kind of intervention we can provide so in the aspects of clinical side or in the

aspects of focus or in policy level or in company level in an organization level like that so we will find all those reasons behind dropouts and we'll find all those reasons begin sustained So based on that, we are planning to do research. That's wonderful. Given that the type of work or the type of people that you support are facing difficult problems and it can be really hard to hear about, how do you make sure that the work you do is sustainable? What support do you need as a social worker?

So one is lack of manpower to work on research side as well as the clinical side. Now I am working in the aspects of clinical side, not when it comes compared to research areas, it's very less because there is no manpower, like only two of people working here and other volunteers, they will be available for only two or three months. They do assessments and all. So in supported employment, there are lots of work has to be done. For say example, like in vocational rehabilitation, there will lots of people have to work the multi-disciplinary team and psychiatric social worker has to work,

psychologist has to work but we just started two years before this program so we are improving the manpower as of now still we need the manpower on the issue to work on the research areas as well so that's then only based on research findings we can improve the intervention yeah one thing we have in our mind when it comes to research it will take months and years so what we do I'll just So say example, so there are lots of learning that we need to improve. So we are planning to organize another job for in the end of the year. So what we are going to do, we are calling all the candidates those who attended the job

first before. We are calling them again back. Not all those people, just five or ten people. And we are calling about to call the employees for discussions. It's not about a structured discussion. This is a semi-structured with the questionnaire of semi-structure. We are just collecting the data, how we can improve in the perspective of employees and in the perspective of candidate and in the perspective of caregivers and in the perspective of volunteers and in the perspective of mental health professionals. So what are the mistakes made before and what are the mistakes should not be made again?

This is not an exact research, but we collect all those factors together and we'll work on. Yeah, great. You mentioned earlier that some people have a very limited understanding of what mental illness is and how it affects someone, and sometimes that's because it's what they see in the media or in films. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I faced in the beginning of my job, I just based, so I can share two of the examples from my experience. When I try to try with another NGO that, for a whole, working with physical disabilities as you started why you can't incorporate mental health disabilities also there also comes in disability and they are also want to support one supports from us like that when we're talking about these issues and he mentioned we referred actually

we referred mental illness person to an company and the employers says they're getting violence and they are disturbing others they are not in real life real world it's like they are something talking with someone like that dimension. So he told that the employee is telling like that, so we don't refer any mental health patient. Then I have asked a question to them, did you assess them in the vocational aspect? Because it's not about the physical disability,

they're just referring the clients to the employer. Like there is a job available, you can go there and get it dropped. So I found that issues among the, uh, those who are able to provide support. Then I try to convey them but couldn't get tired with them. So these issues, yes, they are not understanding. Even though the people who are supporting the physical visibility, they are not understanding. So that's the reason, one reason.

And another example is when I have worked with another employer and he said that I saw many movies. So many movies they will mention as a psycho. They are also, they will use the word, which hurts me a lot, actually. I was very much trying to them and convey them. They are not even considering the mental health people they can work. They are not even considering that. So I was hurting by their words by mentioning. But anyways, it's part of challenges and part of learning for our program.

Then we discussed as a mental health professional, we should break the stigma, then we targeted all those employers, we'll train them, we'll provide a workshop. And we are also planning to give a workshop to all the H.S.R. peoples. We can also provide a certificate. Your company is mental health friendly. So that the many people can come and participate in the workshop. We do train them what is mental health and what is mental health and what is mental is mental health. and how they can work and we will call all the employers to meet our candidates everyone will come out to say one great positive example I can see one of the employer who doesn't have a knowledge about mental health and mental illness

they are in need of employees once he called me and they want employees I want employees please refer some candidates close to who can go and I asked him to come and visit our place. Please meet the people who are selected. Please meet and talk to them. And they came and they have a brief discussion and they are very much impressed by the brief discussion. These candidates are very qualified.

They're mentioning like these candidates are very qualified and very well functioning. They look like normal. Instead of mentioning this, they're saying they look like me then how can, I don't know how reading this understanding this, like that they were saying. Yeah. So we thought we should call all the employees to meet the candidates to see their eligibility criteria, to see their communication skills, to see their social skills as well, everything.

So we call all the employers who are being touched with us. They call them and they will have some chats with our clients. Yeah. No, that's a great initiative. Yeah. I'm interested to know if you didn't do this sort of social work because you did your internships and then you did the placement in mental health and then you continued on when you finished your degree and went straight into doing something very similar.

Is there any other kind of social work that you've always thought sounded interesting that you might like in future to try? Yeah, of course. planning to do a PhD in future and want to work in research areas as well in future actually research and teaching now also I'm working with multiple people in the research areas like five papers I'm working on it it's going to be published within one or one of years yeah so why I choose research because there are lots of people can be able to provide clinical interventions.

But in research areas, there is lack of evidence-based researchers. So I just want to start that and I just want to give evidence to provide interventions to support the employment among the mental needs. I do PhD and I'll focus on vocational rehabilitation. and we will make support for them. Yeah, I love that. Yeah. So that we can connect with all the people who are providing vocational rehabilitation

and supported employment programs and also supporting physical disabilities in jobs, getting them a job. So that I can be able to provide intervention, and I can able to censorate the people for recruiting them or for the different makeup. Yeah, and it would tie in really well to what you already have in terms of the recovery focus and that importance of being in employment and being part of a workplace and a sense of belonging.

And I really love that your program is providing incentives and initiatives for employers and trying to reduce hopefully some of that stigma by just exposure in the workplace of people who have a mental illness but are still functioning really well and doing really well in life. And your research studies hopefully will, you've already done a lot of research and you've published and you're doing things there. But if you do future research, as you said, focusing on vocational rehab, that will help even more to bring attention to some of these issues.

So you're doing such great work in the field of social work. And is there anything else maybe before we finish up that you haven't mentioned or that you wished I'd asked you about? Yeah. I have mentioned many things. If I want to add some other things, the multidisciplinary team has to work perfectly actually. I don't know how other countries are having such issues.

But here we do face not an equal. consultants will tell what we have to do like that. And psychologists will tell one person. And social workers will tell you. But fortunately or unfortunately, I'm so likely to be here in my hospital. I do not face any issues. That's really great. Do you have a team that trust your opinion?

Yeah. They do give our freedom and we will share all those things. We'll work together. There is no different. between among us. So I can be able to work with the limited agents of mental. But it depends on the culture of the workplace, which you see every day in other workplaces.

Yeah, yeah. I'm so glad that you work in a very supportive place with people that trust and respect what you have to say. Yeah. And one more thing I want to say, I just started my journey in 2024 as a psychiatric social worker here in a sense of research. on a different here. Whatever I want to learn, I can learn here. I'm pretty sure about it. I want to work in

clinical settings. I have option. I want to work in free procedures. I have option. So I want to learn anything more. I have option. Whatever if you want to land, you can learn. Like that, they will push us. So it's very much interesting thing and impressed things here I'm working. Seeing someone move from independence to independence is the best part. of this work. So this helps a lot. For me, social work is about helping people regain their dignity and achieve equal opportunities, whether in hospitals, NGO, or through research. My goal is to support people in building better life. That's so good. Salva, thank you so much for sharing all of that and for helping me learn a bit more about what social work is like in India and the

specific type of work that you're doing, which is so important and will continue to make an impact with your research. And yeah, I'm sure a lot of other people will enjoy hearing about it as well. Yeah, sure. Thanks for joining me this week. If you would like to continue this discussion or ask anything of either myself or Selver, please visit my anchor page at anchor.com.fm slash social work spotlight. You can find me on Facebook, Instagram and Blue Sky, or you can email SW Spotlight I'd love to hear from you. Next episode's guest is Estefana, a seasoned trauma therapist and the director of clinical training at Arise Alliance Institute, with a steadfast commitment to compassionate mental

health care tailored to communities in need, developing and implementing training curricula in critical memory integration to bolster trauma-informed and PTSD treatment practices. With over two decades in mental health, spanning roles from behavioral health technician to medical and residential social work, she now also practices at Lighthouse Psychiatry and TMS in Gilbert, Arizona, supporting clinical care and psychedelic research. I release a new episode every two weeks. Please subscribe to my podcast so you'll notify when this next episode is available. See you then.