Sivakumar Palanimuthu Thangaraju
Sivakumar Palanimuthu Thangaraju
Professor of Psychiatry & Head, Geriatric Psychiatry Unit
National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS)
Prof. Sivakumar has been a Faculty in the Geriatric Psychiatry Services of the Department of Psychiatry at National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS), Bengaluru since 2006. He is serving as the Professor of Psychiatry since 2016 and as the Head of the Geriatric Psychiatry Unit since 2021.
Prof. Sivakumar has been focused on promoting geriatric mental health care through a comprehensive public health approach. He has contributed to many public health initiatives with the target of reducing the high treatment gap for geriatric mental health care. He has conceptualized and implemented outreach initiatives to promote public awareness and advocacy on geriatric mental health care, healthy ageing and age friendly community.
In addition to the hospital based geriatric mental health services, Prof. Sivakumar and his team is supporting the delivery of geriatric mental health care to older adults in destitute homes and has utilized tele-geriatric mental health care services to improve the access to treatment.
Promoting skilled human resources through the training of multidisciplinary mental health professionals and utilizing task sharing approach to train all the stakeholders involved in the care of older adults has been one of his important priorities. He has contributed to the establishment of the specialty training in Geriatric Psychiatry and fellowship programs in geriatric mental health for trainees from Psychology, Social Work and Nursing. NIMHANS is the only Institute in India to have the mandatory training in Geriatric Psychiatry for trainees from Psychiatry and allied mental health disciplines like Psychiatric Social work.
Prof. Sivakumar and his team has collaborated with Governmental and Non-Governmental organizations to promote the training of primary care physicians, health care workers, nurses, family caregivers, paid caregivers, volunteers and older adult themselves.
He has contributed to the development of training modules and certificate courses under the NIMHANS Digital Academy for these training programs. He has also contributed to the geriatric psychiatry training in Nepal, Bangladesh and Myanmar by conducting training workshops for Psychiatrists in these countries.
Prof. Sivakumar has contributed to the research in geriatric mental health care through projects funded by National and International organizations. He has mentored many PhD Scholars and trainees from Psychiatry, Clinical Psychology, Psychiatric Social work and Psychiatric Nursing. He has more than 100 publications in peer reviewed journals. He is currently involved as a Co-Investigator in multiple longitudinal cohort studies on brain ageing and dementia including the ‘India ENIGMA Initiative for Global Aging & Mental Health’ and ‘Harmonized Diagnostic Assessment of Dementia (DAD) for Longitudinal Aging Study of India (LASI)’- funded by NIH /NIA.
His contributions to improve the geriatric mental health care, training and research has been honoured by Indian Psychiatric Society- Karnataka Chapter with “Prof. Raguram Distinguished Young Teacher Award for the year 2021-22.
He is also actively collaborating with leading Non-Govenmental Organizations like Indian Association of Geriatric Mental Health (IAGMH), Dementia India Alliance, Alzheimer’s and Related Disorders Society of India (ARDSI) to promote geriatric mental health care.
