'What is normal today may not be normal in a year's time': Dr. Dinesh Bhugra on the idea of 'normal' in psychiatry

Dr. Dinesh Bhugra became interested in psychiatry while dissecting cadavers in medical school in Pune, India. From the inside, the bodies looked so similar, yet people think and behave so differently, he mused. He became fascinated with the forces that shape differences in behavior, eventually focusing on culture.

"Most of my active research has been on culture and mental illness," said Bhugra, who previously served as president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) and the British Medical Association.

Bhugra, who is also a professor emeritus of mental Health and cultural diversity at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and NeuroScience at King's College London, has spent much of his career striving to improve public mental Health. He's addressed gender-based interpersonal violence and worked to reach underserved populations, including refugees, asylum seekers, elderly populations, and the LGBTQ+ community. Bhugra, the first openly gay president of the WPA, has also been outspoken on how prejudice and discriminatory policies impact the mental Health and suicide rates of LGBTQ+ people.

Live Science spoke with Bhugra ahead of the HowTheLightGetsIn festival in London, where he will discuss mental Health, how we define "normal behavior" and whether those definitions are actually useful benchmarks in the context of psychiatric care. His talk will take place Sept. 22.

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Nicoletta Lanese: You emphasize that psychiatry deals with a complex mix of biological, cultural and socioeconomic components. Do you feel like that concept is well incorporated into modern psychiatry?

Dr. Dinesh Bhugra: I think there are still gaps. Quite often as clinicians, we do not have enough time to explore everything. I've seen it in places like India, where the consultation is so short. So, you know, a patient starts speaking, you kind of give them a prescription — but it [psychiatric care] is much more than that.