Wysa awarded £5.3m to address girls’ mental health in rural India

Wysa has secured £5.3m to adapt a digital mental health programme for adolescent girls in rural India.

The funding comes from Wellcome and will support a scale-up study to tailor a clinically validated digital intervention for girls facing limited autonomy, restricted access to technology, lower literacy, stigma and family gatekeeping.

Digital interventions are app-based programmes that deliver guided tools to manage anxiety and low mood, and are tested to show clinical benefit.

 

The study will map cultural and practical barriers to access, adapt Wysa’s content and delivery to those realities, and then test effectiveness in real-world low-to-middle-income settings.

Wysa is a global platform that combines artificial intelligence and human support to provide psychological wellbeing services.

It is used by more than seven million users across 105 countries and works with healthcare providers, employers and governments including the UK’s NHS, the Ministry of Health in Singapore, and programmes in India.

“This funding allows us to go far beyond simple translation,” said Chaitali Sinha, chief clinical and research and development officer at Wysa and the study’s principal investigator.

“By working closely with academic and community partners, we aim to co-design a digital intervention that is not only clinically effective, but genuinely usable and relevant for adolescent girls living in rural India.”

India has more than 253 million adolescents, the largest such population globally.

Around half of mental health conditions begin before age 14, and suicide is among the leading causes of death for young people.

The study team includes Aparna Joshi from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Ceire Costelloe and Patrick Kierkegaard from Imperial College London, Dhirendra Pratap Singh from Milaan Foundation, and Becky Inkster from the University of Cambridge.

Miranda Wolpert is director of mental health at Wellcome.

She said: “We are delighted to support Wysa in their work to adapt and scale up this evidence-based digital intervention to address anxiety and depression in adolescent girls across rural India.

“This funding was awarded as part of our call to find the best ways to develop and scale digital innovations for early intervention.”