Preety Das

Preety joined KCL in 2017 as an Academic Clinical Fellow. She is currently an SpR in South London and Maudsley NHS Trust and member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. During the COVID-19 period, she focused on research conducted by the Health Inequalities Group around the impact on BAME communities; she also collaborated with Professor Dinesh Bhugra on discrimination in mental illness. During her ACF, she was based in in the Mental Health, Ethics and Law Group and focused on Advance Decision Making in Bipolar.

Prior to Psychiatry training, Preety commenced GP training in Imperial College NHS Foundation Trust, where she completed an innovative training post at the King’s Fund. Here, she co-authored policy reports on the ‘Integration of Mental and Physical Health’ and ‘Pressures in Primary Care’. She also organised and co-led survey user focus groups to inform policy making decisions.

In 2015, Preety undertook a master’s in Public Health at Harvard University, where she focused on the social determinants of health. She evaluated long-term outcomes for ‘Early Head Start’, a federally funded community-focused programme for underserved families with young children. She conducted research in Boston Children’s Hospital, which led to the formation of a global quality improvement initiative.

Preety completed her junior doctor training in London, during which she received London deanery prizes for leadership and peer representation. She holds an MB BChir and MA from the University of Cambridge.

Research interests:

• Intersection between mental health policy and social inequality; service user involvement to inform policy-making
• Integration of mental and physical healthcare
• Advance decision making in Bipolar Affective Disorder

Teaching:

• She is a Steering Member of the ‘Maudsley Cultural Psychiatry Group.’ This initiative serves to promote socio-cultural education and community engagement within the Psychiatry Training cohort; via academic, experiential and creative platforms. The Group has senior support from Professor Stephani Hatch, Professor Dinesh Bhugra and the Maudsley Postgraduate Psychiatry Department.
• From 2017-2020, she volunteered in the Psychiatry Early Experience Programme which involved being shadowed by and teaching KCL medical students during on-call duties.
• During her medical education at the University of Cambridge, she was a Clinical Supervisor and ran the first student organisation for patient safety, encouraging peer led quality improvement projects and multidisciplinary teaching.

Expertise and public engagement:

• At the King’s Fund, she organised and co-led groups to gather service user perspectives around the integration of mental and physical health in the following spheres: perinatal, long-term conditions, severe mental illness, medically unexplained symptoms, carers and residential homes.
• In an event run in partnership with YoungMinds, she chaired a workshop around integrated care for vulnerable young people; she wrote creative articles around this theme that represented voices of the young people in attendance.
• As part of a panel led by Professor Dame Sue Bailey at the King’s Fund, she represented the trainee perspective on how to overcome the divide in education and training for physical and mental health.

Publications:

• Magna Carta for individuals living with mental illness. Albert Persaud, Dinesh Bhugra, Preety Das et al,. International Review of Psychiatry. May 2020. DOI: 10.1080/09540261.2020.1753963
• Bringing together physical and mental health within primary care: a new frontier for integrated care. Preety Das, Chris Naylor, Azeem Majeed. J R Soc Med October 2016 109: 364-366, PMID:27729592
• Bringing together physical and mental health: King’s Fund Publication, Chris Naylor, Preety Das, Shilpa Ross, Matthew Honeyman, James Thompson, Helen Gilburt. March 2016
• 10 priorities for integrating physical and mental health: King’s Fund Publication, Chris Naylor, Preety Das, Shilpa Ross, Matthew Honeyman, James Thompson, Helen Gilburt. March 2016
• Improving mental health outcomes for young people: the perspective of a GP trainee: King’s Fund Publication. Preety Das. November 2015
• Understanding Pressures in General Practice: King’s Fund Publication, Beccy Baird, Anna Charles, Matthew Honeyman, David Maguire, Preety Das. May 2016