Budget 2026 gives a boost to mental healthcare: North India to get its own NIMHANS

NEW DELHI: Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced the plans to set up a new unit for the National Institute for Mental Health and Neuro Sciences in North India. Acknowledging the lack of mental health institutions in the region, she also announced the national mental health institutes in Jharkhand’s Ranchi and Assam’s Tezpur shall also be upgraded.Addressing the gaps in the mental health infrastructure in India, Sitharaman introduced the upgrade, stating, “Reaffirming our commitment to mental health and trauma care, there are no national institutes for mental health care in North India.”She further announced the government’s plan to establish and upgrade mental health institutions in North India. She said, “We will therefore set up a NIMHANS 2.0 and also upgrade national mental health institutes in Ranchi and Tezpur as regional apex institutions.”

NIMHANS is a premier, autonomous medical institution for mental health, neurology, and neurosurgery, which is located in Bengaluru, Karnataka. Later, in the press conference following the budget, the finance minister addressed the attention given to mental health and ensuring a dignified treatment for all the ‘divyangajan’, she remarked that the Union Budget would be inclusive to all.Overall, healthcare featured prominently in the Union Budget 2026 speech. The budget also underscored the government’s push to position India as a major tourism hub. The Finance Minister announced customs duty waivers on 17 cancer drugs, along with duty exemptions for medicines used to treat seven rare diseases.In her address, Sitharaman also said the government will add three new Ayurveda institutes, upgrade Ayush pharmacies and drug-testing laboratories to meet top-tier certification standards, and strengthen the WHO Global Traditional Medicine Centre in Jamnagar.