Scientific Committee – Rethinking

Dr. Brigita Baks is a psychiatrist and psychoanalytical therapist based in Vilnius, Lithuania. She has been working in the field of eating disorders since 1999 and is founder and director of the Center for Eating Disorders at the Vilnius Mental Health Center. She is a supervisor of residents at the psychiatric university clinic of Vilnius University, and supervisor of psychoanalytic psychotherapy studies at the Kaunas Society for the Studies of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy and the Lithuanian University of Health Sciences. She is a member of both the Lithuanian Psychiatric Association and the Lithuanian Association of Psychoanalysis.

PG Diploma in Counselling, MIMH – Pune.
M.A. Psycology, University of Pune.

Dr. Mahesan Ganesan is currently a Consultant Psychiatrist at the National Institute of Mental Health, Angoda, Colombo, Sri Lanka. He was registered as a consultant psychiatrist in 1995.

Prior to his work at the mental Hospital, he worked extensively in the conflict and tsunami affected district of Batticaloa, in Eastern Sri Lanka where he was instrumental in developing a community mental health service model. He spent over 9 years working in Batticaloa. He was responsible for providing services for over 1.4 million people as the only psychiatrist. There were hardly any services as there has not been any psychiatrist in this region for over 20 years. He helped develop a model with minimum resources that has now been implemented. It includes small acute inpatient care units in hospitals; many out reach follow-up clinics, and community work. He was instrumental in developing the concept of GBV desk in Batticaloa district in 2005 and helped to establish similar services in five other hospitals in the Northeast of the country.

The program also focuses on child protection, drug and alcohol abuse, psychosocial activities, developing services for the learning disabled children (intellectual disability) and more.

He also serves as a Board Member of Samutthana, Centre for Human Rights and Development, Survivors Associated and Global Initiative in Psychiatry (FGIP) Good practice group, and patron of Ampara special needs network.

Shehan Williams is Professor in Psychiatry at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Kelaniya, in Ragama, Sri Lanka. He did his post-graduate training at the Post Graduate Institute of Medicine, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka, and was trained in Psychiatry in the Professorial Psychiatry Unit, Warneford Hospital, University of Oxford and the Oxford Deanery Rotation in the United Kingdom. He is currently President of SAARC Psychiatric Federation. He is also Consultant to the Office of National Unity and Reconciliation, Presidential Secretariat, Sri Lanka and Honorary Executive Director, Lanka Alzheimer’s Foundation.

Robert van Voren – Head of committee

Robert van Voren (1959) is a Sovietologist by education. A graduate of Amsterdam University, he obtained his PhD at the Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas (Lithuania) where he is Professor of Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies. He is also Professor of Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies at Ilia State University in Tbilisi, Georgia. He is also Executive Director of the Andrei sakharov Research Center for Democratic Development at Vytautas Magnus University.

Starting in 1977, he became active in the Soviet human rights movement. In 1980, he co-founded the International Association on Political Use of Psychiatry and became its General Secretary in 1986.

Van Voren holds a number of positions on boards of organizations in the fields of human rights, mental health and prison reform.

Van Voren has written extensively on Soviet issues, the Second World War, and issues related to mental health and human rights. More than a dozen of his books have been published.

I did my Ph.D. in Health Service and Population Research at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London. In 2015, I established the Department of Public Mental Health at the National Institute of Mental Health, Czech Republic (NIMH CZ), and I had been leading the department until June 2021 when I was appointed as a director of NIMH CZ. As of February 2021, we also achieved a designation as the WHO Collaborating Centre for Mental Health Service Research and Development, and I became a director of this WHO CC. In the recent decade, I have been involved in the development and implementation of the mental health care reform in the Czech Republic; and I have been leading three nation-wide projects on de-stigmatization, early interventions in psychosis, and system for evidence based mental health care development. I co-authored both, National Mental Health Action Plan 2030 and National Suicide Prevention Plan of the Czech Republic. My research and practice is very much focused on improving mental health care in the region of central and eastern Europe. I am also serving as a Lancet Commissioner for Mental Health Stigma and Discrimination (commission due in 2022). I was awarded European Psychiatric Association research prize for the best paper published in 2016.

Vanessa Cameron is currently the Chair of the Federation on Global Psychiatry (FGIP) having previously been the Secretary. She works as a consultant to the World Psychiatric Association. She was previously the Chief Executive of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, a post she held for over 30 years. She was awarded the MBE in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours in 2013 for services to psychiatry and is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

Her particular interests are in the public perception of psychiatry, the eradication of stigma in psychiatry, equality issues and organizational change.

Policy Officer GGZ Ecademy, Tilburg, the Netherlands.

Supervisor Community Mobile Mental Health Teams WHO Ukraine.

Mental Health consultant Federation Global Initiative on Psychiatry.

Active in mental health care since 1975. Especially at the interface of education and mental health. Involved with FGIP since 1992.

I am a psychiatrist, now retired from clinical practice as a Consultant at the Maudsley Hospital in London, who has had major interests in the past in eating disorders, carers of patients with a psychosis, and health services research. My research now concerns methods of reducing compulsion and ’coercion’ in psychiatric care, for example, through the use of ’advance statements’ or ‘joint crisis plans’. This is related to my interest is mental health law, which I argue discriminates against people with a mental illness. I propose generic legislation covering all persons, whether they have a ‘mental’ or ‘physical’ disorder who have a difficulty in making a treatment choice which has serious consequences. I am interested in the implications of recent human rights treaties, for example, the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, for such law.

My past posts have included Dean of the Institute of Psychiatry (2001-2006), and Medical Director of the Bethlem and Maudsley NHS Trust (1997-1999) then joint Medical Director of the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust (1999-2001). I was a Visiting Professor in the Department of Sociology at the London School of Economics (2005-2014). Between 2007-2015 I was an Associate Director of the NIHR Mental Health Research Network, with lead responsibility for Patient and Public Involvement (PPI). A major aim was to increase the involvement in mental health research of service users and carers as partners in the conduct of research, as well as to engage the interest and support of the general public.

Prof. Szmukler is currently the chair of the Special Committee on Human Rights of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, UK.

Dr. Marianne Schulze, LL.M., is an Australian-Austrian human rights expert and a Member of the Board of the Federation Global Initiative on Psychiatry.

Ms Sunkel is the Founder and CEO of the Global Mental Health Peer Network. She is a global voice for the rights of people with lived experiences of mental health conditions. She’s been working in the field of mental health, advocacy and human rights since 2003. She has published widely on issues related to mental health and human rights, stigma and the needs of people with mental illness in low-and middle-income countries. Ms Sunkel had been involved in several Lancet Commissions and currently co-leading (with Prof Sir Graham Thornicroft) the Lancet Commission on Stigma and Discrimination in Mental Health. Ms Sunkel had been involved in the review and drafting of various policies and legislation in South Africa and provided technical assistance to national and international mental health related documents. She serves on a number of international boards and committees, and previously been on the South African Presidential Working Group on Disability and Ministerial Advisory Committee on Mental Health. Ms Sunkel is the former Principal Coordinator for the Movement for Global Mental Health. She is a faculty member of the Indian Law College. She received a number of national and international awards for her work, with the latest being the Pardes Humanitarian Prize in Mental Health.