Our Team
Dr Ashlesha Bagadia is a perinatal psychiatrist and family psychotherapist at The Green Oak Initiative Community Mental Health Centre with over two decades of experience in mental health.
She is faculty on several courses including Systemic Practice in Family Therapy, Perinatal Mental Health for Obstetricians and Psychotropics Medications for Therapists. She has completed higher training in Perinatal and Women’s Mental Health, Family Systems Psychotherapy and Mentalisation Based Treatment. She has a keen interest in bringing advanced psychotherapy skills to India and making it accessible to areas with limited resources. She hopes to make clinical skills that may originate from western theories, more culturally relevant and adaptable to local settings. She has been conducting workshops and courses with a view to help clinicians make meaningful connections, grow through stronger peer interactions and provide better collaborative care.
Pavitra Jayaraman believes that mental health belongs in all conversations and even more so in clinical settings. She is building The PARC to ensure that mental health is an important aspect in all health experiences through training, communication and community engagement. At The PARC she manages growth, collaborations, marketing and operations. She is faculty on the Evolving as a Therapist course.
In her previous role she built the content operations for White Swan Foundation for Mental Health – a knowledge centred non-profit – that curated complex information on mental health for workplaces, adolescents, parents, teachers and the elderly in six Indian languages through several offline and digital platforms. Pavitra is also an independent journalist and communications consultant. She has worked with NDTV where she reported on politics and health and with Mint as a long form features writer.
Poornima Mahindru is a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist in the field of mental health for over a decade. In the course of her professional journey she has experienced a dearth of opportunities to upskill herself. She strongly believes that mental health professionals need constant training and learning to provide quality care to their clients.
At The PARC, she brings together collaborations with national and international experts to expand the Indian mental health community’s access to high quality training. Poornima is also a core faculty member for one of our popular courses Evolving as a Therapist.
She carries vast experience of working in premier organisations like Manipal University and NIMHANS and has been in the leadership roles in private neuropsychiatric hospitals. She currently practices with The Green Oak Initiative where she specialises in perinatal mental health and personality disorders and provides clinical and professional supervision for mental health professionals.
Catherine Sanders is a clinical psychologist, family therapist and co-director of Bower Place. With over four decades of experience both as a practitioner and trainer, she has been a part of the changing landscape of multicultural Australian society.
Dharani is course director of the Foundation Course in Psychodynamic Psychotherapy and is a core faculty member for one of our popular courses Evolving as a Therapist.
She is an RCI registered clinical psychologist and psychotherapist with a decade of clinical experience. She has completed her Ph.D in Clinical Psychology at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS), and also worked as clinical psychologist there.
She has extensive experience working with adults with emotional and attachment difficulties. Her area of research during Ph.D, was on Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). She has been trained in Mentalization Based Treatment by Prof. Anthony Bateman (UK), a specific form of therapy for people with BPD.
Jyothsna Chandur is a Clinical Psychologist and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist with MPhil from NIMHANS, Bangalore and PhD from TISS, Mumbai. She has been in private practice in Bangalore for about 15 years. Her areas of interest include personality disorders, psychotherapy process, experiential learning in therapy, therapist-client relationship in long-term therapy.
Malcolm Robinson is a social worker, family and systemic therapist, mediator and director of Bower Place. He has over forty five years of clinical, therapeutic, teaching and management experience across the mental health, welfare, education, disability, and justice systems. He has expertise in working with complex co-morbid mental health matters and therapy with fractured and fragmented families.
Dr Rathna Isaac is a psychotherapist, supervisor and trainer with more than 20 years of experience. She works with individual adults and couples as a private practitioner using an integrated framework. She is an external consultant for the Couple and Family Therapy Programme at Parivarthan Counselling and Training Center and on the Board of Studies for the Development of Psychology, St. Joseph’s College. She is co-author of Reflective Practice and Professional Development in Psychotherapy (Sage Publications, 2022).
Krishnan, a Chartered Accountant since 2008 and IIM Ahmedabad alumnus, realized his childhood dream of becoming a CA joining a century-old family tradition in the profession. He specializes in new company set-up, GST and income tax for clientele in India, the UK, US, and Japan. In addition to his core competence in representation before tax tribunals, Krishnan is a writer and a trainer believing in making taxes less taxing. Outside work, he enjoys travel, OTT, cricket and reading on global business trends.
Dr Anthony W Bateman is a psychiatrist and psychotherapist and consultant to the Anna Freud Centre, London. He developed Mentalization Based Treatment (MBT) for borderline personality disorder and studied its effectiveness in research trials. Adapted versions are now being used in multi-centre trials for antisocial personality disorder, complex PTSD, eating disorders, and drug addiction.
Dr Bateman is also a visiting professor at University College, London. He was an expert member of National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) development group for treatment guidelines for Borderline Personality Disorder in the UK and was Chair of the National Guideline Development Group for Eating Disorders.
Dr Prabha Chandra is senior professor of psychiatry and dean of faculty of behavioural sciences, at the The National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro-Sciences (NIMHANS), Bangalore. She is the president elect of the International Association for Women’s Mental Health, a past executive member of the Marce International Society and co-author of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) curriculum on intimate partner and sexual violence, as well as the WPA Position statements on perinatal psychiatry and violence against women. She is also a co-author of the recent Lancet Commission for mental health and violence against women.
An active researcher with 17 funded grants as principal investigator, she has also edited several books on women’s mental health and palliative care. Dr Chandra was heralded as a champion for women’s mental health by Lancet Psychiatry. She started the first dedicated perinatal psychiatry service and Mother Baby Unit in Asia and also organised the first ever Marce International conference in a low and middle income country ( LAMIC), in Bangalore, India. She is also a consultant to the World Health Organisation and The United States Agency for International Development for implementation of perinatal mental health programmes in LAMIC.
Dr Shaibya Saldanha is practising gynaecologist and co-founder of Enfold Proactive Health Trust, an orgnisation that addresses gender and sexuality with a special emphasis on child sexual abuse, through education, training, research, advocacy, and tangible support.
Dr Saldanha was formerly associate professor at the department of obstetrics at St John’s Medical College, Bangalore. At present she is a training consultant to the state government of Meghalaya on maternal and child health.
Radha Ramaswamy is a practitioner and trainer of Theatre of the Oppressed (TO), a participatory theatre pedagogy widely used across the world for social and personal change. Following her training in Theatre of the Oppressed at the Seattle-based Mandala Center for Change, Radha founded the Centre for Community Dialogue and Change (CCDC) in Bangalore in 2011. CCDC is committed to making this powerful and versatile tool for creative change accessible to individuals and communities everywhere. To this end Radha offers workshops and trainings across different cities in India and abroad, working with students, teachers, health professionals, women’s groups, senior citizens, and other communities of people. She has collaborated with many institutions of higher learning on theatre-based projects, and presented papers and conducted workshops in several conferences on education, teacher training, and mental health.
