Initiated in the year 1996, Ashadeep was established with the vision of achieving a life of better quality for persons with mental disorders and their families by filling a void in the state's psychiatric rehabilitation system. The anguish of mental disorders is suffered mostly by the family members when the patient is in an acute stage and has no control over his or her speech, actions, or behaviour. This was experienced by the founding pillars of the organisation, who had undergone the struggle of ensuring care and treatment for a family member with schizophrenia. The experiences of taking care of and rehabilitating a family member suffering from schizophrenia over a period of nearly ten years brought the realisation that there were many other families whose lives had changed because of having a mentally disabled person at home. The motivation for establishing Ashadeep to facilitate such a person's post-clinical rehabilitation stems from this experience, as even today the mental health services in North-East India are inadequate to cater to the population of over 30 million people in the region. Since its inception, every intervention facilitated by the organisation has evolved keeping in view the "contextual needs" of persons with mental illness and individuals with intellectual disability and associated disorders. The core area of Ashadeep consists of being a service provider for mental health interventions for one and all in the community. The stakeholders, as such, do not only consist of persons with mental disorders and their families but also members of the community, such as professionals in various fields, school and college students, civil society organisations, multi-purpose health workers in rural areas, health practitioners, police personnel, and state machinery.