Moner Pathshala
Moner Pathshala, like 'Sexuality Academy' is a four day annual residential workshop for budding psychologists, councellors, therapists and psychiatrists organized by Sappho for Equality. The intent behind organizing this workshop is to make mental health practitioners/service providers aware regarding the various forms of violence and discrimination done upon queer and trans* individuals in the larger context of the society. Mental health practice must be informed by and centre the needs of queer-trans* persons in order to systematicaly counter the long-standing history with mental health sciences of pathologizing homosexuality and transgender identities. A need was also felt to make visible the lived realities of queer and trans persons and to shift their presence within the mental health classroom as museumised others, or even as abject figures, but as whole individuals living ordinary and extraordinary lives embedded within the contexts of family, work, friendships, intimate relationships, and communities.