Dr. Kersi Chavda on Suicide Prevention, Mental Health, AI, and Media Ethics

Dr. Kersi Chavda on Suicide Prevention, Mental Health, AI, and Media Ethics

Dr. Kersi Chavda is a senior Mumbai psychiatrist with more than 35 years of clinical, academic, and advocacy experience. He serves as a consultant psychiatrist at P. D. Hinduja National Hospital, Hinduja Healthcare, and Sir H. N. Reliance Foundation Hospital. A past president of the Bombay Psychiatric Society, he has led Indian Psychiatric Society task forces on school psychiatry and LGBTQ+ mental health and contributed to work on autism, learning disabilities, and ethical psychiatric practice.

In this interview, Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Dr. Kersi Chavda examine suicide as a psychiatric and public-health challenge in India. They discuss adolescent academic pressure, depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, substance misuse, family support, bereavement, and media contagion. Chavda outlines prevention through direct questioning, confidentiality, professional treatment, follow-up, and safer environments. They also consider toxic workplaces, AI chatbots and psychiatric avatars, corporate responsibility, legal accountability, and warning signs requiring prompt professional intervention in contemporary clinical practice.