The Department of Psychiatry has a team of mental health professionals who specialise in a wide variety of skill sets; currently, the professionals comprise of Psychiatrists, Psychologists, Nurses, Occupational Therapists, Speech, and Language Therapists, attending to patients across the life span (children, adolescents, adults and geriatric population). We also have administration and research teams to take care of day-to-day operations and maintain our research portfolio.
The department offers a CPSP accredited General Adult Psychiatry Residency Programme, and is in the process of achieving accreditation for our Fellowship Programme in Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. We are very proud that a majority of our faculty are AKU alumni and that the entire team is actively engaged in PGME, UGME and graduate teaching across several programmes at AKU.
The department offers Continuing Medical Education (CME) programmes throughout the year that cater to medical and allied health professionals. Our efforts towards advocacy for patients struggling with mental health challenges, and towards making mental health frameworks applicable across all medical specialties is a cornerstone of the work we do; Liaison Consultation Psychiatry is an important component of the overall service structure.
At present, major research themes in the department are:
- suicide prevention
- women's mental health
- child and adolescent mental health
- school mental health
- trauma and resilience
- quality and patient safety
There are active grants within the stated themes led by the department's faculty members. In faculty-led endeavors, trainees are actively engaged for mentorship in education, research and community outreach. Faculty members also remain active on social media and electronic/print media for public awareness and reducing stigma surrounding mental health conditions. We take great pride in celebrating diversity, learning from shortfalls, experiencing unconditional support from the community, and operating as a team. Helen Keller's words capture the department's dynamics accurately: “Alone we can do little; together we can do so much''.
- Dr Nargis Asad,
Chair and Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatry
