Director's Profile
Dr. Pratima Murthy takes the helm as Director of NIMHANS
Dr. Pratima Murthy, Professor
and Head of the Department of Psychiatry, NIMHANS took charge as full-term
Director of the Institute on 18th June 2021.
Dr. Pratima brings about 30
years of extensive experience and exceptional accomplishments in the field of
mental health. A well-recognized leader in addiction psychiatry, she has been
instrumental in the successful development of state-of-the-art Centre for
Addiction Medicine at NIMHANS.
She has served as a consultant
to prominent international agencies such as the United Nations Office on Drugs
and Crime (UNODC), the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the World
Health Organisation (WHO). She has also served as a resource person for various
flagship training programmes in substance abuse prevention and tobacco
cessation in the country, and across the globe.
Dr Pratima is also recognised
for her contribution in improving care for persons with mental illness through
her work with the National Human Rights Commission on quality assurance in
mental health care both in institutions and in the community.
In recognition of her research
and academic excellence, Dr. Pratima has received numerous awards and honours including
the prestigious Dr. Raja Ramanna State Award by the Government of Karnataka and
Lifetime Achievement Award from Rotary. Recently, she was honoured with the WHO
Regional Director’s Special Recognition Award on ‘World No Tobacco Day 2021’
for her remarkable service in tobacco control. A prolific author, she has more
than 300 research publications in various international indexed journals and
scientific books to her credit.
Dr. Pratima received her MBBS
degree from Bangalore Medical College in 1985. She obtained DPM and MD
(Psychological Medicine) from NIMHANS in 1987 and 1989 respectively. She joined
as a faculty at her alma mater in 1993, and has worked in various academic
capacities since then. She is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians
(FRCP)-Glasgow.