Journey to the Centre of the Self

Rina Arya is Professor of Critical and Cultural Theory at the University of Hull. She has written widely on topics in culture, religion and the arts. Her monograph Francis Bacon: Painting in a Godless World (2012) was longlisted for the W. M. Berger Art History Prize in 2013. She is currently working on an extended project about cultural appropriation. Dinesh Bhugra is Emeritus Professor of Mental Health and Cultural Diversity at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King's College London. He was President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, World Psychiatric Association and British Medical Association. In 2012 he was awarded a CBE for services to psychiatry.

• Acknowledgements; Part I. Contextual Information: Introduction; 1. Culture and psychiatry; 2. An overview of South Asian migration to the UK; 3. An overview of the interviews; 4. Capturing the lived experience; 5. The primacy of the lived experience as the route to change; Part II. The interviews: Dr Cheema; Dr P. Jauhar; Dr Yousaf; Dr A; Dr Chada; Dr Sivakumar; Dr Baruah; Dr Sami; Dr Davé; Dr S. Jauhar; Dr Mohiuddin; Dr Kaushal; Dr Giri Shankar; Part III. Analysis: 6. Negotiating cultural differences; 7. The therapeutic relationship; 8. Ways forward; Conclusions and recommendations; References.

'When anyone in the UK suffers a major mental illness, who are you going to call? South Asian psychiatrists might stake a surprisingly vigorous claim to be the largest ethnic grouping of psychiatric specialists, responsible for the mental health of the entire nation, via the NHS. Yet they remain a neglected and unfashionable subject, often facing direct racial antagonism from their own patients. This is a scholarly, yet personal, attempt to redress the injustice of their marginalisation. How they have soldiered on despite astonishing obstacles placed in their way by the NHS, their colleagues and the regulator of the medical profession, the General Medical Council, is an important, riveting, yet timely, drama.' Raj Persaud, FRCPsych, Consultant Psychiatrist, Harley Street, London; author of The Mental Vaccine for Covid 19 (Amberley Press)