Professor Piyal Sen

My interest in human rights stems from early exposure to the writing of the poet Rabindranath Tagore, who was the first Asian to win the Nobel Prize for literature. He wrote about the crisis of civilisation even in the last year of his life (1941) and warned about the dangers of war, nationalism and industrialisation. It is interesting that the world today is in a similar crisis, grappling with some of these very same issues. The industrialisation he talked about then has been replaced by technology and its attendant challenges.

I found some of the answers when I started my training in psychiatry in Kolkata and was exposed to the work of Sigmund Freud, where I read how he provided an explanation for the discontent in civilisation, arguing that the ethical values championed by civilisation are fundamentally opposed to a human being’s instincts, which are inherently aggressive and seeking self-satisfaction. To stay with Freud’s model, I see human rights as fulfilling the superego function to modulate the instinctual urges of the id for the ego to operate appropriately. My subsequent experience in Forensic Psychiatry exposed me to how human rights principles are applied daily in areas like capacity, restrictive practice, institutionalisation and most of all in the quest to achieve the most just outcome, not only for our patients but also for society.

I have always been interested within the field of forensic psychiatry in patient groups who are particularly stigmatised, for example, those diagnosed with personality disorder. I previously was the Consultant for a specialist personality ward for men and now run a specialist secure service for women mainly diagnosed with personality disorder. I was Trustee and now Senior Member of the British and Irish Group for Services in Personality Disorder (BIGSPD), the largest professional and patient group for personality disorder in the UK. There remains a huge amount of stigma within mental health services for those diagnosed with personality disorder. I also have a strong interest in another highly stigmatised group, victims of forced migration, having been exposed while growing up to the plight of refugees following the Partition of India and the Bangladesh war in Kolkata. I am an active member of the College’s Working Group for Victims of Forced Migration and have contributed to several College publications in this area. The thread which unites all these interests is the traumatised nature of these groups and their vulnerability to human rights abuses.

My psychiatric training in the UK was in London, both core and specialist training, including a few years as a Lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neurosciences, King’s College and at Queen Mary and Westfield College, London. I completed the Post-Graduate Certificate for Academic practice (PGCAP) while training and have always maintained a strong research and teaching interest. I have been practising as a consultant forensic psychiatrist since 2001, currently the medical director of a 114-bedded hospital in Milton Keynes named Chadwick Lodge under Elysium Healthcare, with mainly forensic but some non-forensic beds. I am also Visiting Professor and Clinical Educator at Brunel Medical School, Brunel University.

My research and teaching interests have been in the fields of personality disorder, cultural psychiatry, risk assessment and medical ethics. I teach a module on professionalism, ethics and law to undergraduate medical students at Brunel and on stigma and non-discrimination, I teach in a course on bioethics, human rights and health law to an international cohort of doctors and medical students.

I consider teaching and publication to be essential for the development of practice in psychiatry where human rights considerations need to be ingrained into every psychiatrist’s thinking.