From a School Counselling Room to a Movement for Mental Wellbeing: How Prarthana Thaker is Rewriting the Mental Health Conversation in Jamnagar

While many companies start with an opportunity within the market, others start with a passion. Lilac Minds began with something quieter, a school counselling room where students learned that asking for help is a sign of strength.

Long before founding her own practice in 2023, Prarthana Thaker heard many stories which never got recorded in report cards. As a counselling psychologist at Delhi Public School, Jamnagar, she helped students deal with  issues such as anxiety, academic stress, self-doubt, family problems, and the uncertainty of adolescence.

What she noticed in her students again and again was not the lack of ambition or talent. It was the lack of safe spaces in which adolescents could speak openly about their problems.

It took Prarthana Thaker seven years to see how things changed little by little. Adolescents stopped being silent about their problems and started looking for help by themselves. Parents began seeking counselling proactively, rather than only as a last resort.

These experiences formed the backbone of Lilac Minds.

Currently, the counselling and career guidance center in Jamnagar provides its services to students, teens, parents, teachers, and professional adults in person in Jamnagar and online across India. But what makes Lilac Minds stand out is its approach.

According to Prarthana, mental health and the direction of life are two interconnected things. An anxious student finds it hard to decide on a career path while a stressed professional starts having doubts about his future. Instead of looking at mental health and career guidance as two separate fields, Lilac Minds combines them both into one with the help of counselling, psychometric career testing, and guided programs.

Amidst the flood of coaching platforms and supposed specialists, Lilac Minds chooses to stay practitioner-focused. Each client of the organization works only with the founder, Prarthana herself, an experienced Counselling Psychologist with an MA in Counselling Psychology and an ICCC-certified Career Counsellor.

The practice has also managed to break another old barrier.

Access to mental health services in small cities can be hindered due to availability, social stigma, language barriers, and logistics. Lilac Minds manages to overcome these barriers by providing sessions in English, Hindi, and Gujarati languages while expanding their services via online consultation services which proved helpful for people who were unable to physically attend a session such as students of small towns, busy professionals, and women in joint families. 

One thing that must be mentioned about Lilac Minds is that its popularity grew due to trust.

Lilac Minds did not grow through quick-win marketing. It grew through referrals, from families, students, and professionals it genuinely helped.

The organization is currently looking to expand its reach beyond individual counselling by engaging in collaborative projects with schools, colleges, and other institutes. Utilizing the vast experience of Prarthana within the educational environment, these projects will involve student wellness, career readiness, parental involvement, and awareness campaigns for mental health aimed at making the educational ecosystem healthier.

However, for Prarthana, this mission is much more than just a project.

“I did not aim to set up a counselling centre,” she explains. “I wanted to provide people with professional help without having them feel that they are not being understood, intimidated, or unreachable.”

As the discussions about mental health become ever so crucial today, Lilac Minds is becoming a much-needed phenomenon – an option of credible, empathic, and culturally aware counselling provided by professionals.

What started off as one counsellor trying to help students with various issues has become a growing movement towards making emotional well-being and right decisions accessible to many more people one discussion at a time.

Contact Information

Phone & WhatsApp: +91 82007 11499
Email: prarthana@lilacminds.com