Our podcasters

Dr Ovais Badat is a Teaching Fellow based in Gloucestershire. He is a General Adult Psychiatrist and his research interests include healthcare leadership and the role of the voluntary sector.

Dr Badat facilitates business skills learning for doctors and works for the BBC as a member of the Disbursements Committee for Children in Need.

Dr Ken Checinski is Senior Lecturer and Consultant Addiction Psychiatrist St George’s, University of London. He is medical spokesman for the national antidrugs campaign (talktofrank.com) and convenes the RCPsych Addictions User and Carer Liaison Group.

Ken is also Medical Director of Addaction (a charity providing clinical drugs and alcohol services across the UK).

He has worked as a writer and broadcaster on BBC and ITV, and has produced both films and stage work related to mental illness. Between 1998 and 2003, he was co-director of the media project of Every Family in the Land, the College’s five year campaign to address the stigmatisation of mental illness.

He has a special interest in media misrepresentation of violence in psychotic illness, and the teaching of media skills to mental health professionals. In 2008, he published his first book, Outdoor Psychiatry, cowritten with Dr Trevor Turner.