Sami Timimi

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Sami Timimi is a British psychiatrist. He is a consultant in child and adolescent psychiatry, Director of medical education at Lincolnshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, and a visiting professor of child psychiatry at the University of Lincoln.

Contents

Background

Timimi grew up primarily in Iraq until the age of 14, then due to political difficulties moved to England; his mother is English and his father Iraqi. He has written of his experience of psychiatric training and early practice. [1]

Career

Timimi is patron to the charity Carefree Kids and has authored several books including 'A Straight-Talking Introduction to Children's Mental Health Problems'. [2] He gained an NHS England Regional Innovation Fund award for leading on an Outcome Orientated Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (OO-CAMHS) project. [3] He is a member of the Council for Evidence Based Psychiatry which focuses on adverse effects of medications in the long-term. [4]

Timimi is skeptical of the benefits of psychiatric diagnosis, seen as primarily cultural constructions, and has critiqued the medicalisation of the various problems subsumed under the categories of ADHD and Autism (the latter co-authored with people with the diagnosis). [5] He has described global mental health initiatives as a form of neo-liberalism. [6] In his own practice he uses group psychotherapy focused on building relationships, using some techniques from The Nurtured Heart Approach. [7] [8]

In 2020, Timimi helped organise an open letter to Adrian James, the new President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, calling on British psychiatry to do more to tackle racism. [9]

Books

Related Research Articles

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References

  1. On becoming a child and adolescent psychiatrist: a personal account In Pathological Child Psychiatry and the Medicalization of Childhood, 2002/2014, Sami Timimi.
  2. Carefree Kids: Our people
  3. Culture and Equality in Mental Health: Sami Timimi
  4. Council For Evidence-Based Psychiatry: Members Retrieved 01 August 2016
  5. Sami Timimi on ADHD, Autism and Children's Mental Health Apr 01, 2016, Psychology Today, Eric R. Maisel Ph.D.
  6. Sami Timimi, (2011) "Globalising mental health: a neo‐liberal project", Ethnicity and Inequalities in Health and Social Care, Vol. 4 Iss: 3, pp. 155 - 160. https://dx.doi.org/10.1108/17570981111249293
  7. ADHD: 'Being different is not an illness' The Independent, William Sutcliffe, 21 September 2015.
  8. Nurtured Heart tempers ADHD InMind, December 2011, Lincolnshire Partnership NHS Trust
  9. O’Dowd, Adrian (2020-07-03). "Psychiatrists urge royal college to tackle racism". BMJ. 370: m2657. doi:10.1136/bmj.m2657. ISSN   1756-1833. PMID   32620545. S2CID   220303090.