Dr. C Naveen Kumar 
Professor of Psychiatry & Head, Community Psychiatry Unit,
Adjunct Faculty: Centre for Psychosocial Support in Disaster Management
Consultant: Forensic Psychiatry, Telemedicine Centre
Contact number: 080-26995254
Email id: cnkumar1974@gmail.com
My areas of interest are ‘Community Psychiatry’, ‘Forensic Psychiatry’, ‘Telepsychiatry’ and ‘Electroconvulsive therapy’. Since the early days of my career, I got interested in Community Psychiatry and started working with patients with severe mental illnesses living in rural communities. The scope gradually and steadily expanded and since the past four years however, I have taken a leadership role. Based on the decade long experience of running community intervention programs in rural taluks (Thirthahalli, Turuvekere and Jagaluru), I was able to envision the concept of ‘Taluk Mental health Program (TMHP), now, a part of National Mental Health Program. Currently, TMHP is running in 10 taluks of Karnataka, funded by the National Mental Health Program. The success of this program has the potential to expand throughout the country.
I am closely collaborating with several state governments for expanding and implementing National Mental Health Program: Karnataka, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim, Maharashtra, Telangana, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and West Bengal. The programs that I am leading focus on capacity building and local empowerment of the state, with regards to mental health. The capacity building activity has covered a wide range of cadres of mental health workers and include lay-counselors, nurses, ASHA workers, ANMs, psychologists, social workers, MBBS medical officers, assistant medical officers and psychiatrists. While doing so, I have contributed to several innovative and replicable practices in these states. Starting digitally driven courses (certificate courses, diplomas) are also part of this effort. Harnessing technology has been an integral part of all the above endeavors. (nimhans.co.in; nimhansdigitalacademy.in). Considering the huge treatment gap for mental illnesses in India, these efforts have the potential to exponentially increase human resources to cater to the big need. These efforts have also been recognized and awarded by academia and the industry alike
As a partner for the ‘Clinical Research Centre’, I plan to take the best practices in non-invasive brain stimulation techniques to more peripheral areas of practice such as the secondary care centres.