He is a consultant psychiatrist, passionate about phenomenology and evidence-based and innovative treatment methods. He has completed his MBBS from Mysore Medical College and Research Institute. Then he went on to do a Diploma in Psychological Medicine from the Central Institute of Psychiatry, Ranchi, a premier mental health institution. He then completed the Diplomate of National Board in Psychiatry in 2008 from K S Hegde Medical Academy, Mangalore.
In clinical practice, his keen interest is in common mental disorders, PTSD, OCD, and personality disorders. Post DNB, he has 17 years of work experience. As a senior resident, he has worked in two different institutions (both government and private), with exposure to a variety of psychiatric disorders. He has also worked in a few multinational drug trials as a sub-investigator and has attended many ICHGCP trainings and trainings in psychopathology assessment as part of clinical trials.
As an assistant professor, he has worked full-time in a medical college, which involved clinical work and UG teaching as well as research and administrative responsibilities.
He has overseas experience working in community psychiatry with a recovery-oriented approach to major mental disorders. It involves acute inpatient care, brief teams for home visits, and follow-up in community care clinics and clinical care in the rehab unit for inmates. It also involved attending mental health tribunal meetings.
Currently, he is a full-time teaching faculty at Kasturba Medical College. He treats inpatients and outpatients in the department of Psychiatry. He adopt a holistic approach and biopsychosocial model in his treatment approach. For psychotherapy, he is interested in the mindfulness-based approach and the mentalization based approach. He is a PG teacher and a PHD guide. He has guided undergraduates in their ICMR-sponsored short-term studentship. He is an ISO trained internal auditor and quality coordinator for Kasturba Medical College and Kasturba Hospital. He has about 50 publications to my credit, which include about 45 articles and 5 book chapters.

As part of academia-industry collaboration, he is working on a novel treatment approach involving virtual reality based therapy in managing patients with bodily distress disorder and those who attempt self-harm, in association with faculty from the Manipal Institute of Technology.

His research areas include suicide, common mental disorders (depression, anxiety disorders, bodily distress disorders), psychopharmacology and innovative treatment approaches, integrative psychiatry, and personality disorders.

After postgraduation, he has worked as a senior resident in psychiatry at K S Hegde Medical Academy, NITTE university. The job not only involved clinical responsibilities but also several multinational clinical drug trials in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, in which he worked as a sub-investigator. Then he worked as a senior resident and as an assistant professor in psychiatry at Mysore Medical College and Research Institute, Mysore. It was a full-time job involving inpatient and outpatient care, consultation-liaison services, and teaching medical students. After that, he worked for about 3.5 years abroad in Melbourne, Australia, in community psychiatry. Currently working as an Associate Professor in Psychiatry at Kasturba Medical College, Manipal, a full-time role as an academic psychiatrist in a university hospital. He is also a researcher actively publishing in his areas of interest.

Awards and recognition:

He was awarded the Dr Ramachandra N Moorthy Foundation Early Career Psychiatrist Leadership Award from NIMHANS, which was through a national level selection process for a leadership training workshop, in 2014.
He was awarded the Dr Raghu Rami Reddy best research paper award by the South Zone branch of the Indian Psychiatric Society in 2022.
He was awarded the Dr G C Boral best research paper award by the Indian Association of Social Psychiatry in 2024.
He has been elected as the President of the Indian Psychiatric Society Karnataka Chapter for the term 2025-26.
He was elected as Hon Editor (2013-15) and Hon Treasurer (2015-17) of the Indian Psychiatric Society Karnataka Chapter.