International Advisory Board
Meet the members of the Centre for Global Mental Health's International Advisory Board.
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Mark Korthuis Mark Korthuis is the President & CEO of the Glenrose Rehabilitation Hospital Foundation, which supports the largest free-standing rehabilitation hospital in North America. He leads efforts to accelerate innovation in rehabilitation medicine, with a focus on research, technology, and care that improves lives. Previously, Mark served as President & CEO of the Mental Health Foundation, where he helped raise over $20 million to expand access to care across Alberta. He was one of the main architects of Kickstand, a first-of-its-kind mental health hub for young people, and played a key role in launching several province-wide initiatives, supporting Text4Hope—a digital mental health service that reached over 50,000 Albertans during the pandemic. Mark is a former Vice-Chair of the Edmonton Community Foundation and a past member of the TELUS Community Board. He currently serves as an advisor to several mental health technology companies and is a board member with the Global Psychological eHealth Foundation. Named one of Edmonton’s Top 40 Under 40 in 2020, Mark was inducted into the University of Alberta Sports Hall of Fame and awarded the Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee Medal in 2022. He is currently completing his Master’s in Counselling Psychology and hosts the podcast Confronting the Madness. |
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Patrick McGrath Patrick McGrath is a clinical psychologist, clinician scientist and former senior health administrator, who has focused his career on developing, evaluating and disseminating interventions, primarily in mental health. His leadership and his research has been recognized by numerous awards including being awarded the Officer designation in the Order of Canada, fellowships in the Royal Society of Canada, the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences and the Canadian Psychological Association. He won the Governor General's Innovation Award and the Manning Principal Award for Innovation for his development of Strongest Families. He has published over 400 peer-reviewed papers and has an h-index of 112, with over 52,600 citations to his papers. He has been active in writing for the public, and has authored hundreds of pieces, including Ask Dr. Pat, 90Second Health Letters and Just One Thing for Mental Health. He focuses on e-delivery for health in his research and clinical work. |
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Inge Petersen Professor Inge Petersen is a Research Professor and Director of the Centre for Research in Health systems (CRH) at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, as well as Visiting Professor at the Global Health Institute, University College London and Honorary Professor at the Knowledge Translation Unit, Department of Medicine at the University of Cape Town. She has extensive experience in strengthening the health system to be enabling of integrated mental health care within primary health care in South Africa and in other low-and middle-income countries using implementation science within a learning health system approach. |
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Shekhar Saxena Shekhar Saxena is an Adjunct Professor of Global Mental Health at the Department of Global Health and Population at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. He received his medical and psychiatry training at AIIMS, New Delhi where he worked later as a faculty member. He then moved to World Health Organization, Geneva and worked there for 20 years till 2018; the last 8 years as the director of mental health and substance abuse. He was the technical lead within WHO for the Mental Health Action Plan adopted by the World Health Assembly in 2013. Author of more than 350 academic papers, his expertise includes providing evidence-based advice and technical assistance to policy makers on organization of mental health services especially in low and middle income countries. He has contributed substantially to evaluating cost-effectiveness and return on investment of mental health interventions and application of this knowledge in actual program development. Dr. Saxena led the WHO team in developing mhGAP resources that are being used in more than 100 countries to implement task sharing in the field of mental health. |
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Professor Taiwo Lateef Sheikh Professor Taiwo Lateef Sheikh is a distinguished Professor of Psychiatry at the Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. A Fellow and Chief Examiner at the West African College of Physicians, he also serves as an International Faculty Member at Harvard Medical School's Faculty of Global Mental Health and as an External Examiner at the Ghana College of Physicians and Surgeons. He is the former Head of Department of Psychiatry, former Medical Director/CEO of the Federal Neuropsychiatric Hospital, Kaduna, and has held key leadership roles, including President of the Association of Psychiatrists in Nigeria, Chairman Faculty of Psychiatry and National Secretary of the West African College of Physicians. He played pivotal role in mental health policy reform in Nigeria and across Africa. He contributed to the development of Nigeria's Mental Health Policies (2013 and 2023), the National Suicide Prevention Framework (2023), and the landmark National Mental Health Act (2021)—Nigeria's first modern mental health legislation. He also serves on the Africa CDC High-Level Advisory Committee on NCDs, Mental Health, and Injuries. A prolific writer and former columnist with Vanguard newspaper, he has authored over 80 peer-reviewed publications, presented at more than 60 scientific conferences, and published widely in national and international media. Founder of the Biological Psychiatry Society of Nigeria and convener of the Nigeria Suicide Prevention Advocacy Working Group, he is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Sir Ahmadu Bello Memorial Foundation Award, Grants Fellow of the Year (ABU Zaria), and the Nigeria Physician of the Year Award, in recognition of his exemplary contributions to mental health and public service. |
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Professor Swaran Preet Singh
Professor Swaran Singh (MBBS, MD, DM, FRCPsych) started training as a surgeon in New Delhi, changing to psychiatry after witnessing the impact of 1984 killings on Sikh children. He has been a clinical academic in UK for thirty years, pioneering reform of youth mental health care across UK, Europe, Australia and Canada. He was a Commissioner for Equality & Human Rights Commission (2013-19), mandated by the UK Parliament. He has published over 360 papers on early psychosis, youth mental health, mental health legislation, transcultural psychiatry, and transitional care. His current research involves improving mental health care for young people in the Indian subcontinent and sub-Saharan Africa. He led the Independent Investigation into discrimination (including Islamophobia) within the British Conservative Party (https://singhinvestigation.co.uk). His eternal struggle is between being focussed and productive and wasting time on idle speculation and meaningless meandering. When he can, he enjoys literature, poetry, theatre, photography, music, cricket, cooking, gardening, and fishing. One day he will write a book on the meaning of life and create the perfect Sushi platter. |
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Frédérique Vallières Frédérique Vallières (BSc, MSc, PhD, FTCD) is a Professor in Global Health and the Director of the Trinity Centre for Global Health, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. Her research prioritises the use of participatory approaches to understand individual, community, and system-level responses to disruptive life events so as to strengthen our evidence for how health services and systems can better respond to—and recover from—potentially traumatic events. Prof. Vallières’ career is indebted to the many close collaborations she holds with UN, non-governmental, and academic partners across Europe, MENA, and Sub-Saharan African regions. Prof. Vallières holds a BSc from McGill University (2006) and an MSc in Global Health (2010) and PhD (2014) from Trinity College Dublin. |