About
Dr Desai-Gupta joined Priory Hospital Enfield as an inpatient consultant psychiatrist in a newly opened acute admission ward in 2020. She started in her role as visiting consultant psychiatrist at Priory Hospital North London in 2021. She runs a modern deep repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (deep rTMS) clinic with the latest technology for treating depression and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD).
Dr Desai-Gupta was a consultant psychiatrist within NHS since 2012 where she worked within different types of community mental health teams and gained extensive experience looking after patients with a range of acute and chronic, complex, enduring and treatment-resistant mental health problems, who often posed a risk to themselves or others. She ran special sessions for the assessment and treatment of patients with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), for those with dual diagnoses and those experiencing first episodes of psychotic illness. Her expertise is in diagnosing and treating mood disorders, including anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, psychotic disorders including schizophrenia, personality disorders, ADHD in adults, and autism and mental illnesses with co-morbid alcohol or illicit drug use.
Dr Desai-Gupta was interim associate medical director within NELFT NHS Foundation Trust for 2 years (2017 to 2018 and 2019 to 2020) prior to moving into the private sector. She led a number of projects focusing on optimising physical health in patients with mental illness. She is an experienced trainer in psychiatry, was an educational supervisor for psychiatric trainees, and a medical student tutor and examiner with Universities of London and Manchester. She is the founder of the ‘In-Sync’ multi-professional simulation training programme in psychiatry – aimed at bridging the gap between physical and mental health care, which was awarded ‘Innovative Training of the Year 2017’ by University College London Partners (UCLP).
Dr Desai-Gupta has been a health assessor and medical supervisor with the General Medical Council (GMC) since 2019. In this role she conducts assessments for doctors with mental health problems. She has an understanding of assessing and treating medical and other healthcare professionals with mental health problems.
Dr Desai-Gupta is registered as a media spokesperson with the Royal College of Psychiatrists since 2010. In this role, she has provided honorary expert guidance on various psychiatric topics to media professionals.
Training
Dr Desai Gupta qualified as a doctor from University of Mumbai, India in 2003.
She completed her psychiatric training from across the UK, starting in Scotland at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital and other psychiatric settings (2006 to 2007), thereafter within the Central and North Manchester Training schemes at the Manchester Royal Infirmary, Prestwich Hospital and other District General Hospitals (2008 to 2010) and finally, within the North London Training scheme at the Highgate Centre for Mental Health and Chase Farm Hospital (2010 to 2012).
She is a member of the International Clinical Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (CTMS) Society.
She also trained in delivering cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and cognitive analytic therapy (CAT) to women prisoners with mental illness, as well as psychosexual therapy (2008 to 2010).
She holds a Master of Science (MSc) Degree in Psychiatry from the University of Manchester for her research on the relationship between Spirituality and Depression (2012)
Research interests
Dr Desai-Gupta’s research interest for her MSc thesis was:
‘The relationship between spirituality, personality, coping factors and vulnerability to depression.’ (2011)
The project was a case control study and had received ethical approval from NHS research ethics committee.
During her training years, she had been a lead researcher in a comparative observational study on lithium and semi-sodium valproate (2006) and she had gathered data in a comparative retrospective study of atypical antipsychotics, conducted in Lanarkshire, Scotland (2005). These projects were presented at the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ and other professional conferences.
Languages
In addition to English, she is fluent in Indian dialects of Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi.
Also speaks basic Urdu.