Tremaine So­ca Warn­er

Through­out his ca­reer, Cana­da-based Trinida­di­an psy­chi­a­trist and re­searcher Dr Badri Rick­hi has made big steps in in­te­gra­tive med­i­cine and is com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing that is­sues of men­tal health do not re­main un­ad­dressed.

As the re­search chair of the Cana­di­an In­sti­tute of Nat­ur­al and In­te­gra­tive Med­i­cine and the as­so­ciate clin­i­cal pro­fes­sor of med­i­cine at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­gary, Rick­hi says if men­tal ill­ness­es con­tin­ue to be ig­nored, this could re­sult in se­ri­ous so­cial and eco­nom­ic costs.

Talk­ing to the T&T Guardian via e-mail last week, the award-win­ning psy­chi­a­trist ex­plained how he found him­self in that field. Rick­hi was born in Ch­agua­nas be­fore his fam­i­ly moved to Pasea Vil­lage, Tu­na­puna.

He at­tend­ed St Mary's Col­lege in Port-of-Spain be­fore com­plet­ing pre-med qual­i­fi­ca­tions at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) Mona cam­pus. He lat­er re­turned to T&T and en­rolled him­self in UWI St Au­gus­tine's med­ical pro­gramme.

But his eyes weren't al­ways set on psy­chi­a­try.

"Grow­ing up and in ear­ly high school, I want­ed to join the Roy­al Air Force. How­ev­er, this did not fit with the plans of my fa­ther. He want­ed his sons to have a pro­fes­sion that could be long-last­ing and in his terms 'worth­while.' It was dur­ing the fi­nal years of high school that I de­cid­ed to con­sid­er med­i­cine."

He grad­u­at­ed in 1974 and was lat­er ac­cept­ed to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to to com­plete a spe­cial­ist fel­low­ship pro­gramme in psy­chi­a­try.

Be­tween 1987 and 1993, while work­ing as the deputy di­rec­tor of the psy­chi­a­try de­part­ment at the Cal­gary Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, Rick­hi was recog­nised by the World Heath Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) for ex­cel­lence in epi­demi­ol­o­gy, foren­sic and mood dis­or­ders. This af­ford­ed him the op­por­tu­ni­ty to work with the WHO on re­search projects on men­tal health med­i­cine, par­tic­u­lar­ly in de­vel­op­ing coun­tries.

"At that time," he said, "Dr Julio Ar­bole­da Flo­rez, a very for­ward WHO thinker, asked my opin­ion about where I thought med­i­cine was go­ing to be head­ing in the fu­ture. I felt it was in the area of com­ple­men­tary med­i­cine and he and oth­er mem­bers of WHO en­cour­aged me to ex­plore these ar­eas fur­ther."

He lat­er be­gan stud­ies in tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese, Ayurvedic and Ti­betan med­i­cine as well as elec­tron­ic home­opa­thy. In 2004 and 2005, as a mem­ber of the Bravewell Fel­low­ship Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee, Rick­hi worked on the de­vel­op­ment of a blue­print for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of in­te­gra­tive health care clin­ics in con­ven­tion­al med­ical set­tings.

Asked to ex­plain in­te­gra­tive health care, Rick­hi de­scribed it as "the union of dif­fer­ent par­a­digms of con­ven­tion­al and oth­er med­ical ther­a­pies."

He said non-con­ven­tion­al ther­a­py looked at phys­i­cal and spir­i­tu­al as­pects of a per­son as a well as mind func­tion. It al­so deals with the con­cept that the body has the po­ten­tial to heal it­self if it is giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to do so.

"How­ev­er, pre­ven­ta­tive med­i­cine deals with help­ing the per­son to un­der­stand from all as­pects of them­selves, why they be­came ill and how to im­prove or main­tain their fu­ture qual­i­ty of life. By blend­ing these two con­cepts, it al­lows health­care sys­tems to pro­vide the most ap­pro­pri­ate ther­a­py at the most ap­pro­pri­ate time for the most ap­pro­pri­ate rea­sons."

In 2009, Rick­hi was award­ed with the Dr Rogers Prize for ex­cel­lence in com­ple­men­tary and al­ter­na­tive med­i­cine. The prize is award­ed every two years to a Cana­di­an con­sid­ered to be a leader and pi­o­neer in in­te­gra­tive med­i­cine.

As a phil­an­thropist, he al­so works close­ly with the Sri Narayani Hos­pi­tal and Re­search Cen­tre in Malaiko­di, South In­dia which pro­vides food and med­ical ser­vice to over 100,000 un­der­priv­i­leged rur­al cit­i­zens each month. He said a neu­ro­sur­gi­cal unit is cur­rent­ly be­ing con­struct­ed at the cen­tre.

The 67-year-old said of all med­ical dis­ci­plines, psy­chi­a­try con­tin­ues to re­ceive the least fund­ing and de­vel­op­men­tal en­cour­age­ment.

He said: "We ig­nore the fact that every med­ical ill­ness in­volves hu­man suf­fer­ing. This suf­fer­ing not on­ly af­fects the per­son who is in­volved but al­so fam­i­ly and friends. Men­tal health is­sues, which are un­ad­dressed, cre­ate sig­nif­i­cant costs to so­ci­ety."

He said da­ta con­firms that is­sues of men­tal health are in­creas­ing and that over the next decade, the cost of man­ag­ing men­tal health will be sec­ond on­ly to the cost of can­cer man­age­ment. He said while he has no di­rect com­mu­ni­ca­tion with lead­ers in psy­chi­a­try in T&T, there seemed to be "well-in­ten­tioned de­vel­op­ments" for men­tal health in the coun­try. He added that it could be im­proved by pro­vid­ing po­lit­i­cal and fi­nan­cial sup­port to lo­cal psy­chi­a­trists so they can con­tin­ue their work.

Al­though he cur­rent­ly re­sides in Cana­da, Rick­hi says his great­est gift is be­ing born in Trinidad since "it has pro­vid­ed me not on­ly with an at­ti­tude, but a gift of look­ing at life in a way that can­not be repli­cat­ed by any oth­er cul­ture."