Professor Vikram Patel & Dr Shekhar Saxena

Professor Vikram Patel is a psychiatrist with a special interest in global mental health. He has been a Senior Research Fellow in Clinical Science since 2005 and is a Joint Director of the Centre for Global Mental Health, a partnership of the LSHTM with Kings Health Partners. He is co-founder of Sangath; a Goan NGO which collaborates with the LSHTM on several projects in the areas of child development, adolescent health and mental health. In 2011 he was appointed to the Government of India’s Mental Health Policy group. He is actively involved in teaching, editing and research on the subject of mental health. Dr Shekhar Saxena is Director of the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse at the World Health Organization. He is a psychiatrist by training with 30 years of experience in research and program management service, delivery, and information systems in the areas of mental health. He was one of the writers of the 2001 World Health Report on mental health and an editor and author in the 2007 Lancet Series on Global Mental Health. He led WHO’s Mental Health Atlas and WHO Assessment Instrument for Mental Health Systems (WHO-AIMS). He is responsible for implementation of WHO’s mental health Gap Action Programme.