Formerly Psychologist, Psychoanalyst and Psychiatrist

Dhirendra Nath Nandi, who passed away quietly aged 98 on 26 March 2017, was Head of the Department of Psychological Medicine at the University of Kolkata and a prominent leader of Indian psychiatry. Assisted by a team of several postgraduate students, he carried out significant epidemiological research in different tribal groups in villages of West Bengal. His research findings, which included important longitudinal data, were published not in just Indian but several British and US journals. One important finding related to a dramatic fall in hysterical and anxiety disorders with an equal rise in affective illnesses.Reference Nandi, Banerjee, Mukherjee, Nandi and Nandi¹ His papers were used as standard texts in several educational programmes.

Professor Nandi had a strong interest in raising public awareness of mental health problems. He organised several public awareness programmes on his own and with the Indian Red Cross Society in different parts of Kolkata and other districts of West Bengal. He was frequently invited to be a speaker on various television shows and radio programmes to talk about mental health. In 1990 he wrote a book in Bengali on psychiatry, MonerBikar o Pratikar, which was very popular with the general public, and postgraduate students in psychology and psychiatry. In the later years of his life, he founded the Girindra Sekhar Institute of Psychological Education and Research, where he started a counselling course affiliated with a recognised university of West Bengal for graduates in basic and social sciences. He also established a popular quarterly journal in Bengali, Moner Katha, as well as running an out-patient clinic for the poor and underprivileged mentally ill, which retains its reputation to this day.

Born on 13 August 1918, in a remote village of a district of West Bengal to a poor family and losing his mother in his early childhood, Dr Nandi showed early promise in his studies. He struggled considerably in early life but showed indomitable energy in the pursuit of knowledge in medicine and psychology. After graduation from Carmichael Medical School, then the R. G. Kar Medical College and Hospital, Kolkata, in 1945, he obtained an MSc in psychology in 1950, and a PhD in psychology in 1958 from the University of Calcutta. He trained in clinical psychiatry and psychoanalysis with Professor Girindra Sekhar Bose, the eminent psychiatrist and founder of psychoanalysis and psychiatry in India, and with Professor N. N. Dey, his own maternal uncle and first editor of the Indian Journal of Psychiatry. He began his career in 1948 as a teacher, examiner and researcher in physiology at NRS Medical College and Hospital, Kolkata, where he worked for nearly 10 years.

Marrying in 1949 into a business family, he went abroad in 1960, leaving his wife and three children in Kolkata with his in-laws. He obtained his Scottish Diploma in Psychological Medicine in 1961 and became a Member of Royal College of Physicians (Edinburgh) with a special paper in psychiatry in 1963. In those days, there was no postgraduate training in psychiatry available in India. Returning to Kolkata he was appointed Associate Professor of Psychiatry at R. G. Kar Medical College and Hospital, Kolkata. In 1970 he became Head of the Department of Psychological Medicine at the University of Calcutta. He retired in 1979 as Professor of Psychiatry from R. G. Kar Medical College and Hospital, Kolkata. During his professional life he held a number of important positions in Indian psychiatry, including being President of the Indian Psycho-analytical Society for more than 20 years, and President of the Indian Psychiatric Society and Indian Association of Social Psychiatry. His contributions to the advancement of the fields of psychiatry and psychoanalysis were recognised by numerous awards and prizes.

Professor Nandi had an active interest in cooking, fishing and hunting, and travelled widely with his family and friends. It is noteworthy that his two sons are consultant psychiatrists, his daughter and younger daughter in-law are psychoanalysts, one grandson is undertaking a post-graduate degree in psychiatry, a second grandson is a graduate in medicine, and a third is a final-year medical student.