[2] Kalathil has been involved with the international psychiatric survivors movement since the 1990s and her initial work in this area was around women's mental distress and its representation in literature and cinema.
[9] Her study, Recovery and Resilience, explored the personal experiences of mental distress and recovery of Black and Asian women in the UK, narrated through life story narrative interviews,[10] and Dancing to Our Own Tunes,[11] a review done by her, deals with the experiences of Black and Asian mental health service users within the survivor movement and its user involvement spaces;[12] the report subsequently came up for discussion in the UK Parliament.
[14][15] Kalathil is the author of The Sackclothman,[16] a book for children[17] under the 'Different Tales' project,[18] which has since been translated into Indian languages such as Hindi,[19] Telugu[20] and Malayalam.
[24][25] In 2011, the Mental Health Foundation selected Kalathil's work on the Recovery and Resilience project for the Janice Sinson Research Prize.
[26][27][28] In the same year, Moustache, her translation of Meesha, by S. Hareesh,[29] fetched her the JCB Prize for Literature,[30][31] arguably the literary award in India with the largest winner's purse.