Volume 12 Issue 3 March, 2022
Dr Thara Rangaswamy is a psychiatrist by training and the co-Founder and Vice-Chairman of a not-for-profit NGO called SCARF (Schizophrenia Research Foundation) in the city of Chennai in Tamil Nadu. She was the Director of SCARF for 23 years.
After her PhD on the subject of disability, she lobbied hard for the recognition of mental disability in India. She was largely instrumental in developing the tool IDEAS to measure disability caused by mental disorders. She has collaborated with premier institutions worldwide such as Johns Hopkins, USA, Institute of Psychiatry, UK and others in Australia, Canada etc. She has over 180 peer-reviewed publications.
She initiated several programs like the international conference ICONS, the film festival ‘Frame of mind”, the mobile telepsychiatry programme and one with the Tamil Nadu women’s development corporation to train SHG members on mental health and basic counselling.
She is on the Advisory Committee to the Director-General of the World Health Organization, Geneva and is on the Editorial Board of several reputed journals, including the Schizophrenia Bulletin.
She was awarded the Honorary Fellowship of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the UK, in 2014 and the Presidents Gold Medal from the Royal College, the UK, in 2012. She was recognized by the Schizophrenia International Research Society (SIRS) for her outstanding research in clinical and community psychiatry in 2019. In 2021, she was named a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, Edinborough.
In 2022, she received from the Hon. President of India, the Nari Shakti Puraskar, the highest civilian award for women.
