Description:
This Institute of Mental Health at Kilpauk, Chennai is 225 years old and this is one of the oldest and largest Mental Hospital in Asia. Dr. Valentine Connolly, of East India Company acquired this place by a grant. Later in 1794 the British Raj purchased this Hospital from East India Company.
The hospital has a capacity for 1800 in-patients, in 21 wards including ones for the de-addiction, ward for mentally ill prisoners, intensive psychiatric care ward, and geriatric ward. The patients admitted here mostly suffer from severe mental illness like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, alcohol and drug dependence, traumatic brain injury, etc.
The hospital has an outpatient average census of 500 patients per day. There are six special clinics in the outpatient department like child & adolescent clinic, geriatric clinic, neuropsychiatry, epilepsy clinic and de-addiction.
| Investigator | Profession | Contact Information | Publications | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dr. Poornachandrika P, MD, DCH | Director & Head of Department of Psychiatry Institute of Mental Health, Chennai, Tamil Nadu | pcmddm@gmail.com |  |
|
| Dr S Bevin MD | Assistant Professor of Psychiatry Institute of Mental Health, Chennai, Tamil Nadu | drbevinsathya@gmail.com |  |
|
Research
Previous/ Ongoing Research Collaborations
c-VEDA (Consortium on Vulnerability to Externalizing Disorders & Addictions)
- An ICMR - MRC grant and its main papers
- Comprises of >14.000 participants aged 0-25 years who have been genotyped
- Participants include those with high risk for substance misuse and population-based individuals from different social and environmental (rural and urban) backgrounds.
Collaborating Sites:
- NIMHANS Bangalore,
- PGIMER, Chandigarh;
- RIMH, Tezpur,
- Mysore
ADBS (Accelerator Program for Discovery in Brain Disorders using Stem Cells
- Funded by Department of Biotechnology, Government of India
- Study of multiplex families with severe mental illnesses
- Whole exome sequencing for 300 multiplex-affected families and population controls
Publications
Wray et al. (2018) in Nature Genetics: Genome-wide association analyses identify 44 risk variants and refine the genetic architecture of major depression. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-018-0090-3
Howard et al. (2019) in Nature Neuroscience: Genome-wide meta-analysis of depression identifies 102 independent variants and highlights the importance of the prefrontal brain regions. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-018-0326-7
Funders
