National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS) is now gearing up to revise the syllabus, devise a new curriculum and add new courses, post its autonomy through an Act of the Parliament on September 4, 2012.

The Bill has now allowed the institute to seek affiliations with organizations  in the country and abroad which will now allow it to collaborate with international universities to bring in the best of research to the country.

“We will now work independently in the areas of research of mental health and in academics. Since we are now out of the purview of the Medical   Council of India (MCI) and Nursing Council of India we now need to independently bring in the changes and tap opportunities in the area of mental health excellence and curriculum,” Dr P Satishchandra, director and vice-chancellor, NIMHANS, told Pharmabiz in an interaction.

“Although there have been three institutes which have already received a similar autonomy, like the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Post Graduate Institute (PGI), Chandigarh which received its autonomy since its inception, and JIPMER(Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education & Research), Puducherry a few years ago, in the case of NIMHANS, we acquired it with much effort proving our competence and potential at every stage which has been recognized,” he added.

The new courses for the year 2012-13 are DM (Doctorate in Medicine) in Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, DM in Neuro Anaesthesia, post doctoral fellow in neuro rehabilitation and movement disorders, in addition to six branches in psychiatry, including epilepsy, geriatric psychiatry, addiction medicine, obsessive compulsive disorder and related disorders and clinical neuro sciences and therapeutics in schizophrenia. In addition, post doctoral fellowship in acute care and emergency, psychiatry, post doctoral fellowship in consultation liaison psychiatry and community mental health will also be introduced.

The institute is now aggressively looking to collaborate with leading  institutes globally in the mental health and neuro sciences. The need is to get as many solutions and research findings to provide the relief to patients. Currently the Universities of Liverpool, Glasgow, and Edinburgh are connected with the NIMHANS. In October 2012, Taipei Medical University, Taiwan will ink a pact with NIMHANS.