Soumitra Pathare

Dr Soumitra Pathare MD MRCPsych PhD is a Consultant Psychiatrist and Director of Centre for Mental Health Law and Policy at the Indian Law Society, Pune, India. His primary interests are in the areas of mental health policy, implementation research, youth mental health and suicide prevention. He provided technical assistance the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India in drafting India’s new Mental Health Care Act 2017, which takes a rights-based approach to mental health care and provides for publicly funded universal mental health care. He was also a member of the Mental Health Policy Group appointed by Government of India to draft India’s first National Mental Health Policy released in October 2014. Most recently he provided support to Government of Sikkim, a state in northeast India to draft their youth mental health and suicide prevention strategy. He has served as a WHO consultant in many low and middle-income countries (Botswana, Seychelles, Lesotho, Samoa, Va