Professor Vikram Patel

Professor Vikram Patel

Professor Vikram Patel

Vikram Patel is a Professor of International Mental Health and Wellcome Trust Senior Clinical Research Fellow at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. He holds honorary professorships at the Institute of Psychiatry (London), the Public Health Foundation of India and the University of Melbourne, and is an Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist with the South London & Maudsley NHS Trust, UK.

He serves on a number of international and national committees including the WHO Expert Advisory Group for Mental Health. His recent books include Where There Is No Psychiatrist (Gaskell, 2003) which has become a widely used manual for community mental health in developing countries. He was an editor of the recent Lancet Series on Global Mental Health (2007) and is editor of a forthcoming Lancet Series on universal health care in India. He is leading the efforts to set up the Movement for Global Mental Health which will be launched on October 10, 2008.

Professor Patel has won numerous awards and fellowships including the Rhodes Scholarship, fellowships from the MacArthur Foundation and the Wellcome Trust and the Beattie Smith oration from the University of Melbourne.

He is based in Goa, India, where he serves on the boards of three community based NGOs including Sangath, a community mental health NGO (www.sangath.com) which he founded and which won the MacArthur Foundation’s International Prize for Creative and Effective Institutions in 2008.

In Goa, he leads research projects focusing on the influence of social determinants and cultural factors on mental health, the relationship between mental disorders with other health and social outcomes, and improving the quality of care of people living with mental disorders.