What Ayushman Bharat covers for neurodivergent care

Ayushman Bharat / PM-JAY gets mentioned often as health coverage for neurodivergent conditions, and it's real — the national scheme includes inpatient psychiatric care and hospitalisation for severe conditions including autism and intellectual disability, at no cost to eligible families. The confusion starts with what people assume that includes.

PM-JAY is built around hospitalisation. The therapies that make up most of a neurodivergent family's actual, ongoing spending — occupational therapy, speech therapy, behavioural interventions, routine outpatient consultations — sit outside what it covers. It's the right scheme for a genuine medical crisis requiring admission, and the wrong one to count on for weekly therapy costs.

For that ongoing, outpatient side of care, the Niramaya scheme is built specifically to cover it, including therapy sessions. Treating the two as complementary — PM-JAY for hospitalisation, Niramaya for everything else — is closer to how families actually end up using them in practice.