Institute of Psychiatry, Kolkata

Established in 1817, Institute of Psychiatry, Kolkata (IOP) is the third oldest surviving mental hospital in the country and has a glorious past of caring for persons with psychiatric illness for almost two centuries.

IOP has played a significant role in training mental health professionals from 1989, when it was designated as the training & research wing for Psychiatry, of the Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education & Research, Kolkata. Thus IOP enjoys the hybrid status of being a mental hospital, which also functions as the general hospital psychiatry setup of a tertiary postgraduate medical training institute.
In 2009, IOP was chosen as a Centre of Excellence in Mental Health, under the aegis of the National Mental Health Program (NMHP) of Government of India, underscoring its active efforts to upgrade and develop modern facilities for mental health here. New departments of Clinical Psychology, Psychiatric Social Work (PSW) and Psychiatric Nursing, are functional under the NMHP project, so that multi-disciplinary, holistic care may be available for our patients. New courses of M.Phil in Clinical Psychology and PSW have been started as part of our endeavour to train personnel to provide treatment in a bio-psycho-social framework.

Research is an integral part of any academic institution. Psychiatric research is an area of high priority as it is one of the most active area of research in medical science. Service delivery, prevalence and bio-psycho-social model of disease is being actively explored. Institute of psychiatry started a new department of ‘Psychiatric Epidemiology’ which is only second after NIMHANS, Bangalore.
Our mission at IOP is to cater to various aspects of mental health needs of the populace. We aim to decrease the burden of mental illness through humane treatment of patients, through development of an efficient and compassionate manpower, and through research that takes into consideration the societal responsibilities of a developing nation like ours.
We hope that this interactive portal will be a vital link of communication between any individual who either needs any professional assistance for emotional or behavioural problems or is interested in mental health, on one hand, and our faculty and staff on the other.