Before joining WHO in 1998 and moving to Geneva, Saxena served as a clinical psychiatrist to patients in Delhi, India. One of the organizations he worked for was the All India Institute of Medical Sciences. He has worked with many major European and North American research and academic institutions, including the National Institutes of Health and National Institute of Mental Health in the United States and has been interviewed widely on television and radio, including NPR. In 2010, he was appointed the Director of the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse. Some of his work involves the prevention and management of mental, developmental, neurological, and substance use disorders, and suicide prevention. At WHO, he also led the implementation of the organization's mental health Gap Action Programme. On May 9, 2017, he received the 8th Annual Leon Eisenberg Award at the Harvard Faculty Club in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In June 2018, after 8 years, he stepped down as the Director of the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse at WHO. He is scheduled to speak to the 3rd Global Conference on Health and Lifestyle at Loma Linda University in Loma Linda, California, July 9–13, 2019.
Personal life
Shekhar Saxena is married to Dr. Abha Saxena, Director of Global Health Ethics at the World Health Organization. She is also a medical doctor, anesthesiologist, and a bioethicist, and together they live in Geneva, Switzerland. They have two adult daughters no longer living with them.
Recent publications
Saxena S, Paraje G, Sharan P, Karam G, Sadana R. The 10/90 divide in mental health research: trends over a ten-year period. Br J Psychiatry 2006; 188: 81-82.
Prince, M. Patel, V., Saxena, S, Maj, M, Maselko, J., Phillips, MR, Rahman, A. No health without mental health. The Lancet. September 4, 2007.
Saxena, S, Esparza, P, Regier, DA, Saraceno, B, and Sartorius, N, Eds. .
Evans, T, Marquez, PV, and Saxena, S.. “The zero hour for mental health.” The World Bank Blogs, May 4, 2015. Available at http://blogs.worldbank.org/health/zero-hour-mental-health.
Marquez PV. “Shining a light on mental illness: An “invisible disability”? The World Bank Blogs. 2015. Dec 2, 2015. Available at http://blogs.worldbank.org/health/shining-light-mental-illness-invisible-disability;
Saxena S, and Marquez, PV. . Chapter 8 in Glovin, B. Cerebrum 2016: Emerging Ideas in Brain Science. The Dana Foundation.
Marquez PV, Saxena S. “Mental Health Parity in the Global Health and Development Agenda” The World Bank Blogs. 2016. Apr 4, 2016. Available at http://blogs.worldbank.org/health/mental-health-parity-global-health-and-development-agenda.
