Shekhar Saxena has worked at the

World Health Organization The World Health Organization (WHO) is a list of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations which coordinates responses to international public health issues and emergencies. It is headquartered in Gen ...

(WHO) and since 2010 has been the Director of the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse (MSD) at

's Headquarters Office in

Geneva, Switzerland Geneva ( , ; ) ; ; . is the second-most populous city in Switzerland and the most populous in French-speaking Romandy. Situated in the southwest of the country, where the Rhône exits Lake Geneva, it is the capital of the Republic and Ca ...

. He is recipient of the 2017

Leon Eisenberg Leon Eisenberg (August 8, 1922 – September 15, 2009) was an American child psychiatrist, social psychiatrist and medical educator who "transformed child psychiatry by advocating research into developmental problems". He is credited with se ...

Award. In September 2018 joined the

Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health The Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health is the public health school at Harvard University, located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston, Massachusetts. It was named after Hong Kong entrepreneur Chan Tseng-hsi in 2014 following a US$350 ...

as visiting professor of Global Mental Health in the Department of Global Health and Population.

Education

* MD, Psychiatry - All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi, India (AIIMS) * Medical residency - All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi, India (AIIMS)

Career

Before joining WHO in 1998 and moving to Geneva, Saxena served as a clinical psychiatrist to patients in

Delhi, India Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India. Straddling the Yamuna river, but spread chiefly to the west, or beyond its right bank, Del ...

. One of the organizations he worked for was the All India Institute of Medical Sciences. In 2010, he was appointed the Director of the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse. Some of his work involves the prevention and management of mental, developmental, neurological, and substance use disorders, and suicide prevention. At WHO, he also led the implementation of the organization's mental health Gap Action Programme. On 9 May 2017, he received the 8th Annual

Award at the Harvard Faculty Club in

Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. It is a suburb in the Greater Boston metropolitan area, located directly across the Charles River from Boston. The city's population as of the 2020 United States census, ...

. In June 2018, after 8 years, he stepped down as the Director of the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse at WHO.

Personal life

Shekhar Saxena is married to Dr. Abha Saxena, Director of Global Health Ethics at the

. She is also a medical doctor, anesthesiologist, and a bioethicist, and together they live in

. They have two adult daughters no longer living with them.

References

External links

Google Scholar research site for Shekhar Saxena's publicationsWHO's e-mail contact page for core Mental Health staff
{{DEFAULTSORT:Saxena, Shekhar Year of birth missing (living people) Living people World Health Organization officials Indian psychiatrists 21st-century Indian medical doctors Indian officials of the United Nations Physicians from Geneva Medical doctors from Delhi