About Us

Hank Nunn Institute (HNI) was founded in 2014 by Anando Chatterji and Shama Parkhe. Its roots go back to their years at Athma Shakti Vidyalaya, a residential community for people experiencing severe psychological distress, where they encountered Father Hank Nunn, S.J.

Father Hank Nunn was a Canadian Jesuit who dedicated 35 years of his life to working with individuals diagnosed with chronic psychiatric disorders. His spirit of compassion, community, and courage left a lasting impression and continues to shape the ethos of HNI.

Their experiences inspired ongoing conversations about what mental health care could look like beyond psychiatric labels, biomedical reductionism, and hierarchical models of treatment. What emerged was HNI — named in honour of Father Hank Nunn — as an attempt to build therapeutic spaces where distress is understood in relation to people’s lives, relationships, communities, and social worlds.

From the beginning, HNI has been guided by the belief that care must be co-created with service users, not delivered to them from above. Our work is anchored in the idea that there is no therapy without change, and no change without social change.

Our philosophy rests on three enduring principles:

• Distress over Diagnosis

  Seeing the human being beyond the label.

• Therapeutic Community Values

  Flattening hierarchies, fostering collective reflection, and creating spaces of mutual care.

• Affordable, Accessible Psychotherapy

  Ensuring therapy is not a privilege, but a right.