Vikram Patel MSc MRCPsych PhD FMedSci

Professor of International Mental Health & Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow

I am a psychiatrist with a special interest in global mental health. My passion is to contribute to the goal of closing the astonishing treatment gap and to protect the human rights of people with mental disorders worldwide. The Wellcome Trust has supported my work since 1996 and I hae been a Senior Research Fellow in Clinical Science since 2005. I am Joint Director of the Centre for Global Mental Health, a partnership of the LSHTM with Kings Health Partners (www.centreforglobalmentalhealth.org). I am based for most of the year in Goa, India, working with NGOs and the Government agencies in India. In 2011, I was appointed to the Government of India's Mental Health Policy group tasked with developing India's first national mental health policy and recommending the design of the National Mental Health Program.

I consider five contributions as being especially significant in my work. First, I am a co-founder of Sangath (www.sangath.com), a Goan NGO which collaborates with the LSHTM on several projects in the areas of child development, adolescent health and mental health. Sangath won the MacArthur Foundation's International Prize in 2008. Second, I was an editor of the influential Lancet series on global mental health (2007) and the PLoS Medicine series on packages of care for mental disorders (2009); I am also editor of the second Lancet series on global mental health (2011). Third, I have been a leader in setting up the new Movement for Global Mental Health (www.globalmentalhealth.org), a global coalition of professionals and civil society working together to improve the lives of people affected by mental illness. Fourth, I have led efforts to identify research priorities in global mental health, most recently as the co-chair of the Grand Challenges in Global Mental Health (www.grandchallengesgmh.nimh.nih.gov) Finally, I wrote the book "Where There Is No Psychiatrist", a mental health care manual for non-specialist health workers, which is widely used in developing countries.

Affiliation

Teaching

I coordinate a study module on international mental health for the MSc programs at the LSHTM (jointly run with the Institute of Psychiatry, London) and an annual one week intensive Short Course on Research Methods in International Mental Health (also jointly with the IoP) in London each year in August/September. I also coordinate two short courses run by Sangath in India: a one week short course on Development and Evaluation of Complex Interventions; and a two week short course on Leadership in Mental Health (www.sangath.com) which aims to impart skills on scaling up services for people with mental disorders. Finally, I supervise a number of PhD students in the fields of international mental health and/or public health in India.

Research

My main research in recent years has been on the social and cultural determinants, epidemiology and treatment of mental disorders in community and primary health care settings in India and other resource poor settings. Examples of my recent research include: the association of poverty and gender based violence with depression and suicide; the relationship of mental disorders with other health priorities such as gynecological morbidities, adolescent health, HIV/AIDS and maternal and child health; and the development and evaluation of complex interventions for mental disorders integrated in routine care settings including in schools and primary health care. Recently, I have become increasingly involved in researching child mental disorders and developmental disabilities, and in research on chronic diseases which seeks to integrate mental health care with that for other chronic diseases.

Research areas

  • Adolescent health
  • Primary care
  • Sexual health

Disciplines

  • Epidemiology
  • Medicine
  • Psychology

Disease and Health Conditions

  • Mental health
  • Neurological disease

Countries

  • India

Other interests

  • Child Development
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