COMMISSIONERS

Vikram Patel is The Pershing Square Professor of Global Health and Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow at the Harvard Medical School. His work spans the areas of mental health problems, child development and adolescent health in the global health context, in particular the use of community resources for assessment, prevention and recovery. He co-founded Sangath, an Indian NGO which has won the MacArthur Foundation’s International Prize for Creative and Effective Institutions and the WHO Public Health Champion of India award. He co-founded the Movement for Global Mental Health and is a Fellow of the UK Academy of Medical Sciences. He was named in the TIME 100 most influential persons of the year in 2015.

Dr. Saxena is a Visiting Professor at Harvard T H Chan School of Public Health. He is a psychiatrist by training and has worked previously at the World Health Organization for 20 years including as the Director of the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse, Geneva from 2010 to 2018. His expertise includes providing advice and technical assistance to policymakers on the prevention and management of mental, developmental, neurological and substance use disorders and suicide prevention.  He also works closely with researchers and professional and civil society organizations. Before joining WHO, he was Additional Professor at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India. He has authored more than 300 scientific papers including in high impact journals and was also an editor of the 2007 and 2011 Lancet series on Global Mental Health.

Read The Lancet’s profile of Dr Saxena. 

Crick Lund, BA (Hons), MA, MSocSci (Clinical Psychology), PhD, is Professor of Global Mental Health and Development in the Centre for Global Mental Health, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London, and Professor in the Alan J. Flisher Centre for Public Mental Health, Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health, University of Cape Town. He is the CEO of the PRogramme for Improving Mental health carE (PRIME), a DFID funded research consortium focusing on the integration of mental health into primary care in low resource settings in Ethiopia, India, Nepal, South Africa and Uganda, and Principal Investigator of the AFrica Focus on Intervention Research for Mental health (AFFIRM) U19 NIMH Collaborative Hub. He trained as a clinical psychologist at the University of Cape Town in the mid-1990s and was subsequently involved in developing post-apartheid norms for mental health services for the national Department of Health. He worked for the World Health Organisation (WHO) from 2000-2005, on the development of the WHO Mental Health Policy and Service Guidance Package, and has consulted to several countries on mental health policy and planning. He was a founding member of the Alan J Flisher Centre for Public Mental Health and served as its first Director, from 2010 to 2017. His research interests lie in mental health policy, service planning and the relationship between poverty and mental health in low and middle-income countries.

Graham Thornicroft is Professor of Community Psychiatry at the Centre for Global Mental Health, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London. He also works as a Consultant Psychiatrist at South London & Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust in a local community mental health team in Lambeth. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, is a National Institute of Health Research Senior Investigator Emeritus and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Graham has an undergraduate degree in Social and Political Sciences, studied Medicine at Guy’s Hospital, and is trained in Psychiatry at the Maudsley and Johns Hopkins Hospitals. He also has an MSc in Epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and a PhD from University of London. His areas of research expertise include: stigma and discrimination, evaluations of mental health treatments, services and systems, implementation science, and global mental health. Graham has authored or edited 30 books and over 500 peer-reviewed papers in Pubmed. Graham received a Knighthood in the Queen’s Birthday Honours Awards in 2017

Paul Bolton is a Senior Scientist in the Center for Humanitarian Health and in the Departments of International Health and Mental Health at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Bolton trained as a physician in Australia and worked in general practice and emergency medicine in Australia and the United Kingdom. He later led war-time medical service programs in Bosnia and on the Thai-Cambodian border for the United Nations and several Non-Governmental Organizations. He undertook post-graduate public health training at Johns Hopkins in the mid-1990s and then joined the faculty where he has remained for most of his public health career.

Dr. Bolton’s main interest is in the development of effective and accessible mental health services in low and middle income countries, particularly those affected by war and disasters. His work has focused on how to provide truly accessible evidence-based treatments at the community level given the lack of mental health professionals in most of the world. His main area of research expertise is the design and application of field research methods to develop and evaluate community-based mental health services in low resource environments and across cultures. Dr. Bolton is the primary author of the USAID-funded DIME manual (Design, Implementation, Monitoring, and Evaluation) describing these methods for researchers and program implementers. With financial support from USAID, NIMH, and several NGOs and foundations, he and colleagues have evolved and expanded this approach to conduct program-relevant research in 20 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, Central and Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, the Caribbean, and the Middle East. This work has informed the mental health policy and practice of WHO as well as governments and major NGOs.

Dr Dan Chisholm is Programme Manager for Mental Health at the WHO Regional Office for Europe (based in Copenhagen, Denmark). He works with WHO Member States and other partners to develop and implement national mental health policies and plans, as well as provide guidance, tools and advocacy for the promotion of mental health and the development of prevention, treatment and recovery services across the life-course.  He was formerly a Health Systems Adviser in the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse at WHO Headquarters Office in Geneva, Switzerland. His main areas of work there included development and monitoring of global mental health plans and activities, technical assistance to WHO Member States on mental health system strengthening, and analysis of the costs and cost-effectiveness of strategies for reducing the global burden of mental disorders and other non-communicable diseases.  He has published widely in these areas over the last twenty years, including the Lancet’s series’ on global mental health and the mental, neurological and substance use disorders Volume of the third edition of Disease Control Priorities (DCP-3).

Pamela Collins is Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Professor of Global Health at the University of Washington, where she directs the Program on Global Mental Health. Prior to her current role she directed the Office for Research on Disparities & Global Mental Health and the Office of Rural Mental Health Research at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) (USA). While at NIMH Dr. Collins launched the Grand Challenges in Global Mental Health initiative and established a program of global mental health services and implementation science research in low- and middle-income countries. She was an editor of the 2011 Lancet series on Global Mental Health, editor of the 2013 PLoS Medicine Policy Forum series on integrating mental health into diverse platforms of care, and co-lead of the NIMH-PEPFAR initiative on mental health and HIV. Dr. Collins currently serves as a commissioner for the Lancet Commission on Global Mental Health.

Dr. Collins’s research has focused on social stigma related to mental illness and its relationship to risky behaviors; the intersections of HIV prevention, care, and treatment and the mental health needs of diverse groups US as well as diverse groups in Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa; and she is developing new research on adolescent mental health and women’s mental health.

Dr. Collins obtained her M.D. from Cornell University Medical College and a Master of Public Health from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. She trained in psychiatry and completed a NIMH post-doctoral fellowship at Columbia University /New York State Psychiatric Institute. Dr. Collins studied cultural psychiatry and applied medical anthropology as a research fellow in the Department of Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. She was the founding director of the Global Health Track at the Mailman School of Public Health. Until 2012 she retained faculty appointments at Columbia University in the Department of Epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health and the Department of Psychiatry at the College of Physicians and Surgeons.

Janice Cooper, Ph.D., MPA, is Country Representative for Health for the Carter Center in Liberia and project lead for the Mental Health Program. She oversees a national training, policy and support program to expand capacity for mental health services delivery. A native Liberian and health services researcher specializing in children’s mental health, Dr. Cooper has worked in the private, public, and non-profit sectors in the United States and Liberia.  She is on faculty at Emory University Rollins School of Public Health, and previously served on the faculty of Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. She directs “Supporting Psychosocial Health and Resilience”, a project funded by the Japanese government through the World Bank that addresses the mental health and psychosocial consequences of the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) outbreak and builds the mental health capacity at the community level. The project also creates a new cadre of 100 child and adolescent mental health clinicians. She was a member of the Institute of Medicine’s Committee on Clinical Trials During the 2014-15 Ebola Outbreak, and of Johns Hopkins’ University’s Expert Working Group on Ethics Issues in Public Health Containment for Ebola and other Infectious Diseases. She is a member the editorial board of the journal entitled Intervention.

Julian Eaton, a British psychiatrist, is Global Mental Health Advisor for CBM International and Co-Director of the Centre for Global Mental Health at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. His work involves promoting greater access to health care services, social inclusion, and realisation of rights for people with mental illnesses and psychosocial disabilities, focused mainly on poor and marginalised communities. In CBM, he leads a team providing technical support for programmes around the world, including in emergency settings.

He is currently leading on a number of research projects, and has published on issues relating to mental health in low income countries, and human rights. He contributes in an advisory capacity to many other initiatives including the Movement for Global Mental Health, Global Campaign for Mental Health, Mental Health Innovations Network, the Cochrane Collaboration Global Mental Health group, the WHO’s mental health work.

He recently returned to London, from living and working in West Africa, initially in Nigeria, and more recently in Togo.

Helen Herrman is a psychiatrist and public health practitioner. She is Professor of Psychiatry at Orygen, National Centre of Excellence in Youth Mental Health, and the Centre for Youth Mental Health at The University of Melbourne, Australia.

She is President of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) 2017-2020, and Director of the World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre in Mental Health, Melbourne. She has received the award of Officer of the Order of Australia.

She is a practitioner fellow of the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council. In the past, as Professor and Director of Psychiatry in St. Vincent’s Health Melbourne she led the development of an integrated area mental health service under Australia’s national reform of mental health care. For one year she acted as regional adviser in mental health for the WHO’s Western Pacific Region, based in Manila. Her research and practice interests include community mental health care and promoting mental health. She has past and present research programs in the mental health of marginalised groups, including homeless people, prisoners, and young women and men living in out-of-home care.  She is now leading the WPA’s action plan that is concerned with supporting the contribution of psychiatrists to global mental health.

Mohammad M. Herzallah, M.D., Ph.D., is a neuroscientist and physician. He is the founder and director of the Palestinian Neuroscience Initiative at Al-Quds University in Palestine, and research scientist at Rutgers University in the USA. He obtained an M.D. degree from Al-Quds University, Palestine in 2009, and a Ph.D. in behavioral and neural sciences from Rutgers University, USA in 2015. Mohammad’s research focuses on the cognitive, physiological, molecular and computational correlates of brain systems involved in feedback-based learning of approach (of positive outcomes) and avoidance (of negative outcomes) in patients and animal models of psychiatric and neurological disorders. Mohammad’s research entails the identification of cognitive, physiological, molecular and computational biomarkers for diagnosis of psychiatric disorders and prediction of response to treatment.
At the Palestinian Neuroscience Initiative, Mohammad’s efforts aim to create a powerhouse for neuroscience research in Palestine, train the next generation of Palestinian researchers and healthcare professionals, and create a viable research institution in Palestine to host Palestinian and other neuroscientists to pursue research careers in Palestine (http://neuroscience.med.alquds.edu/). In 2011, Mohammad received the Dr. Raniyah Ramadan Young Arab Neuroscientist Award from the Society for Arab Neuroscientists. In 2013, Mohammad received the prestigious TED fellowship, and he was selected among the 500 most powerful Arabs in the world by Arabian Business. His work was featured by Forbes, Science Magazine, TED, The Verge, and Ozy, among many other media outlets.

Professor Yueqin HUANG got her medical degrees of Bachelor of Medicine, Master of Medicine, and PhD from Peking University. She has worked at the Institute of Mental Health of Peking University since 1987, and became professor in 2000. Prof. Huang is the director of the Division of Social Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine in the Institute. She is vice-president of China Disabled Persons’ Federation, and president of Society of Crisis Intervention of Chinese Association of Mental Health. She also works as the president of Chinese Mental Health Journal. She is the international member and elected as International Fellow of American Psychiatric Association, and fellow of World Academy of Art and Science. She is the principal investigator of a series of research projects and international collaborations, and recently dedicated to the national survey on mental disorders in China, and became the member of Global Health Commission of the Lancet, involving in international mental health promotion. She has published 303 papers including 154 first-author and correspondent-author papers, and is the editor-in-Chief of six books.

Mark Jordans, PhD, child psychologist, is Professor in Child and Adolescent Global Mental Health at the University of Amsterdam and works as Director of Research & Development for the NGO War Child in the Netherlands. He is a Reader, Child and Adolescent Mental Health in Humanitarian Settings, at the Center for Global Mental Health, King’s College London. His work focuses on the development, implementation and evaluation of psychosocial and mental health care systems in low and middle income countries, especially for children in adversities and in fragile states. Mark is the founder and Senior Technical Advisor of TPO Nepal, a mental health NGO in Nepal, where he has lead multiple research programs, most recently around the integration of mental health into community- and primary health care (PRIME, Emerald, mhBeF).

Arthur Kleinman is Professor of medical anthropology in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine and Professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He is the Esther and Sidney Rabb Professor of anthropology in the Department of Anthropology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), and was the Victor and William Fung Director of Harvard University’s Asia Center from 2008-2016.
Kleinman has published six single authored books including Patients and Healers in the Context of Culture; Social Origins of Distress and Disease: Depression, Neurasthenia and Pain in Modern China; Rethinking Psychiatry; The Illness Narratives; Writing at the Margin; and What Really Matters. He has also co-edited books on culture and depression; SARS in China; world mental health; suicide; placebos; AIDS in China; and the relationship of anthropology to philosophy (The Ground Between: Anthropologists Engage Philosophy).
He is currently finishing a book on caregiving.

Director-General of the National Institute on Psychiatry (Mexico) a WHO Collaboration Center Since 1976. PhD in Social Psychology (UNAM), has a teaching appointment in the National University of Mexico (UNAM). She is Member of the Colegio Nacional (National Academy of Mexico) and is affiliated to the Mexican National Academy of Medicine, of the Mexican Academy of Sciences, of the International Consortium of Psychiatric Epidemiology and of the College on Problems of Drug Dependence. She is also member of the WHO International Advisory Group for the Revision of ICD-10 Mental and Behavioral Disorders and is Chair of the Field Studies Coordination Group. Among other recognitions she received the National Award of Excellence in Research by a Senior Investigator from the National Hispanic Science Network on Drug Abuse (2007), the WHO Director-General Special Recognition Award for accomplishments in Tobacco Control (2010) and the National Institute on Drug Abuse Award of Excellence in International Leadership (2011).

Ellen Morgan is a Program Officer with Templeton World Charity Foundation where she supports the identification and development of a wide range of research and implementation projects. Previously, Ellen led the Global Mental Health program at Grand Challenges Canada, managing a portfolio of over 85 projects aimed at improving treatments and expanding access to services for persons living with mental health disorders in Low and Middle Income countries worldwide. She has also worked with Médecins Sans Frontières and as a policy analyst for the Government of Canada. Ellen holds an MPhil in Development Studies from the University of Oxford.

Professor Unaiza is the Advisory Board Member of The Lancet Psychiatry International. She is the Adjunct Professor of the University of Health Sciences, Lahore and Visiting Faculty of Dow University of Health Sciences, Karachi. She is also the Director of the Psychiatric Clinic and Stress Research Center in Karachi, Pakistan.

Olayinka Omigbodun is Professor and Head of Psychiatry at the College of Medicine, University of Ibadan and University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, Nigeria & Pioneer Director of the University’s John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation-funded Centre for Child and Adolescent Mental Health (CCAMH, www.ccamh.ui.edu.ng). CCAMH, a multidisciplinary centre for training, research and service in Child and Adolescent Mental Health enjoys the richness and diversity of tutors and researchers from eight faculties (Arts, Basic Sciences, Clinical Sciences, Education, Law, Pharmacy, Public Health, Social Sciences) in the University and from continents of Africa, Asia, Europe and North America. The rich diversity of CCAMH extends to 75 former, 54 current trainees on a Masters and Postgraduate Diploma programme in CAMH who hail from Cameroon, Eritrea, Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe, 14 countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

Olayinka is Training Coordinator for Psychiatry in the West African College of Physicians (WACP) and is on the Bureau of the International Association for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Allied Professions (IACAPAP; www.iacapap.org) as Past-President.

Martin Prince is Professor of Epidemiological Psychiatry and co-Director of the Centre for Global Mental Health at King’s College London. His work is oriented to the salience of mental and neurological disorders to health and social policy in low and middle income countries, with a focus on ageing and dementia. Martin is committed to further research and advocacy to support the call for action for improved coverage of evidence-based community treatments.

Atif Rahman is professor of child psychiatry at the University of Liverpool and chairs the Academic child mental health unit at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, Liverpool, United Kingdom. He is a Visiting Professor at Rawalpindi Medical University and an Honorary Patron and Advisor to the Human Development Research Foundation, Pakistan. His research has focussed on the epidemiology of maternal mental health, the impact of maternal depression on child health and development, and community-based psychosocial interventions in low-income settings including settings affected by humanitarian crises. He is an expert in developing and evaluating culturally appropriate interventions that can be delivered by non-specialists, teachers and parents under supervision of specialists to children with mental health problems. He has a particular interest in implementation strategies, including task shifting and technology, for scale-up of mental health interventions in low and middle-income countries. He works closely with the World Health Organization in evaluating and disseminating psychological interventions globally.

Benedetto Saraceno is Secretary General of the Lisbon Institute for Global Mental Health. From 2010 to 2017 he has been the Gulbenkian Professor of Global Health at the University Nova of Lisbon and the head of the Scientific Committee of the Gulbenkian Global Mental Health Platform.

From 2000 to 2010, he was the Director of the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse at the World Health Organization in Geneva. In 2006 and 2007 he was also the Director ad interim of the Department of Chronic Diseases and Health Promotion at WHO. He has worked in Trieste with Franco Basaglia before being appointed as  the Head of the Laboratory of Epidemiology and Social Psychiatry at the “Mario Negri” Institute for Research in Milan. He is Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatry, Fellow of the Swiss School of Public Health and Doctor Honoris Causa of the Universities of Central England Birmingham and Nova of Lisbon.

Bidyut K Sarkar is the Project Director of PRIDE Project, (a collaboration between Sangath, India; and the Public Health Foundation of India) is an epidemiologist and public health researcher with a focus on identifying and assessing scalable public health interventions relevant to low resource settings. PRIDE is an adolescent mental health project to develop and assess a trans-diagnostic intervention for common mental difficulties. He has earlier completed a large cluster randomized trial in low income communities in India of an innovative intervention using yogic breathing exercises to quit tobacco use with promising results published in Thorax (2016). He has previously worked for 11 years with WHO country office for India and was National Research Team leader in 2010.

Mary is the Head of Population Health at The Wellcome Trust.

Mary joined Wellcome in November 2015 as Head of Population Health where she directs Wellcome’s funding of population health research in the UK and in low and middle income countries. Mary is also co-leading an initiative to develop a new priority area for Wellcome in mental health research.

Mary has an undergraduate degree in Biological Anthropology from Cambridge, and an MSc and PhD in Epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

She was previously the Deputy Director of the Centre for Global Mental Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, where her research interests included the design and evaluation of complex interventions to improve mental health in low and middle income countries, implementation research to ensure that these interventions are scalable and sustainable, and policy influence work to encourage the translation of evidence into policy and practice. She co-founded and led the Mental Health Innovation Network, a global network of researchers, practitioners and policy makers which aims to promote the use of evidence based interventions to improve mental health (http://www.mhinnovation.net/).

Ms Sunkel is a leading South African voice for the rights of people with mental health problems. She’s been working in the field of mental health, advocacy and human rights since 2003. She authored several papers from a service user’s perspective published in well renowned international medical journals. She has written and produced theatre plays and a short feature film on mental disorders – to raise public awareness. Ms Sunkel had been involved in the review and drafting of various policies and legislation in South Africa and at international level, and provided technical assistance to international mental health related reports and documents. She serves on a number of national and international boards and committees, including: Presidential Working Group on Disability; Ministerial Advisory Committee on Mental Health; Disability Empowerment Concerns Trust; Rural Mental Health Campaign; Editorial Advisory Board of The Lancet Psychiatry; Mental Health and Human Rights FGIP; citiesRISE; Mental Health Financing Working Group; World Innovation Summit on Health Forum on Anxiety and Depression; World Health Organization’s Civil Society Working Group on NCDs and Mental Health; Global Governance Group for the Global Anti-Stigma Campaign; Time To Change Global Governance Group for the Global Anti-Stigma Campaign amongst others. Ms Sunkel is the Principal Coordinator for the Movement for Global Mental Health. She founded the Global Mental Health Peer Network in 2017 which was officially launched at the 5th Global Mental Health Summit in 2018. Ms Sunkel was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1991 which led to her passion for mental health advocacy and human rights, where she received a number of national and international awards for her work, with the latest award for Outstanding Achievement in Mental Health from the Swiss Foundation and the World Health Organization.

Ilina Singh is Professor of Neuroscience & Society and Co-Director of the Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities at the University of Oxford. Her core research examines the psychosocial and ethical implications of advances in psychiatry and neuroscience for young people and families. She holds a Wellcome Trust senior investigator award for a project on the ethics of the early intervention paradigm in psychiatry (BeGOOD); she has also worked extensively on neuroenhancement, and on the ethics of stimulant drugs for Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. Professor Singh leads a collaborative research programme on the ethics of global neuropsychiatric gen-ethics (NeuroGenE), in partnership with the Stanley Centre at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. Professor Singh also leads the Public and Patient Involvement and Engagement theme of the Oxford Health Biomedical Research Centre. Digital bioethics and Big Data Ethics in Mental Health are growing research interests within Professor Singh’s team.

Dan J.  Stein is Professor and Chair of the Dept of Psychiatry and Mental Health at the University of Cape Town and Director of the South African Medical Research Council’s Unit on Risk & Resilience in Mental Disorders.   His work has long focused on anxiety and related disorders, including obsessive-compulsive spectrum conditions and posttraumatic stress disorder.  His research had led to a broad range of publications, spanning from basic neuroscience, through clinical research, and on to public mental health.  He is enthusiastic about clinical practice and scientific research that integrates concepts and data across these different levels, including in the context of low and middle-income countries.  He has a strong track record of leadership in psychiatric organizations, and of mentorship of students and faculty.  He is a recipient of the Collegium Internationale Neuropsychopharmacologicum’s Max Hamilton Award for his contributions to psychopharmacology, and of its Ethics in Psychopharmacology Award.

Dr. Unützer is Professor and Chair in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington and an internationally recognized psychiatrist and health services researcher. His work focuses on innovative models that integrate mental health and general medical services and on translating research on evidence-based behavioral health interventions into effective clinical and public health practice. He has more than 300 scholarly publications and is the recipient of numerous federal and foundation grants and awards for his research to improve the health and mental health of populations through patient-centered integrated mental health services.

Dr. Unützer is founder of the AIMS Center (Advancing Integrated Mental Health Solutions) which has worked with more than 1,000 primary care practices worldwide to test and implement evidence-based Collaborative Care for depression.