For any Class 12 student, March is all about burning the midnight oil — books, notes, and endless revisions. The board exams are in full swing, and the pressure is sky-high. But for 18-year-old mental health advocate Anvi Kumar, even in the thick of exam season, she takes out time to champion a cause close to her heart. “Mental health is like a fireball in India. Whenever people hear it, they think of it as a stigma. Putting a hefty tax on it makes the services like doctor consultations, and therapy sessions even more inaccessible,” says the Gurugram-based schoolgirl who, last year, filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) challenging the government’s lack of clarity on the Goods and Services Tax (GST) applied to mental health services, specifically questioning the rationale behind the 18 per cent GST rate.
Taking note of her PIL, last month, SC served the notice to the Union of India, as well as the GST Council Secretariat to appear in court and called for examination of the matter. Kumar is happy that her efforts to spread awareness about mental health are being acknowledged.
Art-based therapy
Kumar would experience preexam jitters. To quieten the storm in her mind, she started doodling, making murals, graffiti and comic strips. Her interest in comic strips grew stronger in the gloomy days of the pandemic where she took refuge in the world of colourful characters that she created to portray a brighter side of life. “During the pandemic, I was feeling very low after hearing negative news of death and illness. I was also anxious about the exam results. At that point, my mother used to narrate simple stories which built my interest in storytelling with whimsical characters. I started using art to relieve anxiety. I found it a very forgiving medium as you can’t make mistakes in art. It’s less about good or bad art, and more about self-expression,” she says, adding that in today’s world, where we are exposed to all kinds of information, it can become complicated to understand complex issues like mental health amid the flood of information. “Hence, comics are a fun and simple way to educate the masses. You can talk about taboo topics in a childlike and non-descriptive way,” she says.
Comic art interventions
In 2023, Kumar published a series of three comic art strips titled ‘Exam War’, ‘Trip to Rishikesh’, and ‘United We Stand’. “The strip ‘Exam War’ follows four high school students dealing with different mental health challenges like ADHD, OCD, anxiety, and low self-esteem as they navigate the stressful period leading up to their board exams. ‘Trip to Rishikesh’ is about each character’s personal growth journey and how they discover their unique abilities. ‘United We Stand’ tackles the issue of bullying and how to come out stronger,” she tells TMS about the comics that have been distributed across 6,000 schools, reaching over 2,50,000 students in Haryana and Andhra Pradesh. She also founded MindCanvas in 2023, an organisation that uses creative mediums like comic strips to address mental health problems. She was also invited to speak at Comic Con Delhi 2023. After she addressed the audience talking about mental health symptoms in kids and how comics can be a relief, a flood of parents, child psychologists and school librarians approached her post the show. “Parents said that they could identify certain symptoms, that I talked about, in their kids. They found that comics gave them an insight into the lives of children. It further fuelled me with passion to keep spreading the word with comic art as I found my comics being read by not just children but parents and teachers too,” says the 2024 recipient of the Diana Award, established in memory of the former Princess of Wales, Diana, to celebrate young changemakers. Next, after the boards, she plans to make comic strips on the effect of social media on mental health and convert print comics into animated graphics for wider reach.