About
Rahman is a clinical academic, spearheading the Institute’s programme in Global Mental Health, with multiple international projects in the areas of perinatal, infant, child, adolescent and adult mental health, largely in low- and middle-income countries.
He has pioneered task-shifting approaches for mental health (non-specialists delivering simplified but effective psychotherapies under supervision of specialists). His innovative intervention, the Thinking Healthy Programme, was the first psychological intervention to be adopted by the World Health Organization for global dissemination. In the last decade, Rahman has developed and evaluated similar interventions for mental health including early child development, developmental disorders, depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress. Rahman's current focus is on implementation research for the scale-up of these interventions. With colleagues in Pakistan he has pioneered the use of technology to assist training, supervision and delivery of psychological interventions through non-specialists. He has written extensively on strategies to integrate mental health into policy and public health. He is a WHO expert advisor on the development of regional policy for mental health in the Eastern Mediterranean region and member of WHO’s mental health Guidelines Development Group.
The Global Mental Health Research Group would be pleased to hear from PhD students in the following areas: Global Mental Health; Maternal and Child mental health in low- and middle-income countries; implementation research in the global mental health context.
Prizes or Honours
- The International Contribution Award (The International Association for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Allied Professions’ (IACAPAP), 2022)
- Fellowship of the Royal College of Psychiatrists (Royal College of Psychiatrists, London, UK, 2020)
- Channi Kumar Award for Perinatal Psychiatry (The International Marcé Society for Perinatal Mental Health, 2018)
Funded Fellowships
- Wellcome Trust Research Career Development Fellowship Award (Wellcome Trust, 2003 - 2007)
- Wellcome Trust Training Fellowship Award (Wellcome Trust, 2000 - 2003)