Deepika Padukone

Deepika Padukone, one of the most widely known actors in Hindi cinema, is in the social sector best known as the founder of The Live Love Laugh Foundation, a mental health organisation she set up in Bengaluru in 2015.

The foundation grew directly out of her own illness. She has described waking on 15 February 2014 feeling empty and directionless, being urged by her mother to seek help, and being diagnosed with anxiety and depression. Deciding after her recovery that the stigma and lack of information around mental illness in India needed to be confronted publicly, she spoke about her diagnosis in interviews in 2015 and established the foundation the same year.

Its early work concentrated on awareness and on equipping non-specialists. In 2016 it launched More Than Just Sad, aimed at helping general physicians recognise and manage depression and anxiety in ordinary consultations, and worked with Facebook and the helpline organisation AASRA to put multilingual support resources in front of users showing signs of suicidal distress. With the Indian Psychiatric Society, for which Padukone became an ambassador, the foundation ran the #DobaraPoocho campaign encouraging people to ask again when someone says they are fine. The organisation has since run rural and school programmes, a corporate programme, research and a lecture series, and maintains directories of helplines and practitioners.

Padukone has also taken part in other charitable causes, including the 2009 World 10K run in Bengaluru in support of a group of non-governmental organisations, and an NDTV campaign under which she supported electrification of the Maharashtra village of Ambegaon.

She received the World Economic Forum's Crystal Award for her mental health advocacy, and in 2022 a Time100 Impact Award for the same work. Time had named her among its 100 most influential people in the world in 2018.[2][3]