Cultural Consultation Service (CCS)
Cultural Consultation Service (CCS)
This local and national service aims at providing clinical cultural consultations and professional development including teaching and research enquiries to all staff in the Trust and to any clinical and research services across the UK and Europe.
This is not a parallel out‐patient service. Instead, it focuses on consultations with clinic staff who wish to seek advice on cultural issues affecting patient care or within their own clinical service team. Consultations include issues that might arise from any cross‐cultural encounter between clinicians, patients, carers, and the wider community.
Please note: this service is not exclusively focused on Black and Minority Ethnic patients. Referrals may well include clinicians from any Black and Minority Ethnic group who may encounter clinical challenges with patients from a White European background, or from clinicians who experience cultural challenges with patients who belong to the clinician’s own ethnic group.
What is a Cultural formulation?
Please watch a sample clinical cultural formulation conducted on an acute psychiatric ward. Prof. Jadhav pioneered the Bloomsbury Cultural Formulation details of which are at available here.
The aim of the service
The aim of the Cultural Consultation Service is to provide clinical cultural consultations and capacity building for Trust staff. Referrals are welcome from any clinical service in the Trust, from across the United Kingdom and from clinicians in Europe. This includes inpatient, out patient including Community Mental Health Trust services, and planned Mental Health Assessments. A major focus of the cultural consultation is to aim for a cultural dialogue on mutually constructed identities and how this may shape clinical encounters, as well as capacity building withint the clinical team of the referrer.
Referring to this service
Consultant consent must be sought by the referrer. A completed referral form should be sent to the sushrut.jadhav1@nhs.net Upon receipt of the referral, we will make telephone contact with the referrer within seven working days and allocate a time slot based on mutual convenience. For inpatient referrals, the pending outcome of the cultural consultation should not delay discharge.
Download the Cultural Consultation Service Referral form [docx] 76KB.
What to expect
The first consultation with the service is held online with the clinician(s) where they will conduct a cultural assessment and unpack the cultural psychodynamics of the 'problem'.
In some situations, consultants will meet with the patients and care co-ordinator and/or the referring clinician to conduct a Bloomsbury Cultural Formulation Interview.
In other situations, clinical issues or information needed could also be discussed over the telephone or on a video platform.
In all instances, mandatory bespoke readings will also be provided and discussed in follow-up meetings.
The service does not offer cultural fixes, instruments and scales to solve the problem of 'culture'. The emphasis is on appreciating the processes through which wider cultural conflicts, alliances and strengths in society are embodied in patient suffering; and how the clinicians' and their institutions’ cultural identity mutually shape the eliciting, engagement, diagnosis and management in their clinical encounters.
Our timelines
The service is available on 16 October, 13 November, and 10 December 2025, 11am -1pm (when in person, travel time may need to be allowed for).
Emergency referrals can be accommodated at any time during the week and is likely to be over telephone and/or video platform.
From January 2025, the service will be available online, on the second Friday of each month, 11am to 1pm.
Our team
Our team is made up of:
Sushrut Jadhav, Lead Clinician, Consultant Psychiatrist, Focus Homeless Outreach Service and Professor of Cultural Psychiatry, University College London.
Prof. Jadhav is fluent in written and spoken Hindi and Marathi, speaks and understands Tamil, Kannada, Urdu, Gujarati, and elementary Deutsche.
David Mosse, Honorary Cultural Consultant, Cultural Consultation Services, Professor of Social Anthropology, SOAS University of London. Peer-Supported Open Dialogue Practitioner, and Director Centre for Anthropology and Mental Health Research in Action (CAMHRA).
Prof. Mosse is fluent in English and basic Tamil.
Training opportunities
Higher Trainees and GPs are welcome to join the CCS as part of their special interest clinical sessions. This clinical academic supervised training post is for a minimum of 12 months and is twinned with a weekly half-day special interest clinical session at Focus Homeless Outreach Services, 4 Greenland Road, London NW1 0JR. For further details, please contact Prof. Sushrut Jadhav
Past trainees at the CCS (2022-2024)
Dr Constantinescu, higher Trainee, worked at East London Foundation Trust.
Dr Constantinescu leveraged her prior experience working in the Focus Homeless Outreach Service and her experience working with diverse populations in multiple areas of the country, to cultivate a keen interest in Cultural Psychiatry. Her personal mixed European identity, having and fluency in German and French language further enhanced her cultural awareness. She was also endeavoring to learn Arabic and Romanian. This is consolidated by geographical familiarity with Austria, Romania, Bahrain and parts of the USA. She holds a special interest session on Mondays with the Cultural Consultation Service and Focus Homeless Outreach Service.
Dr Arun Enara, higher trainee in General Adult and Old Age Psychiatry in the North Central London rotation.
Dr Enara trained as a psychiatrist in India before migrating to the UK. He worked with the Cultural Consultation Services, as part of his special interest sessions. Dr Enara is fluent in Malayalam.
Outcome and monitoring of our service
The service will aim to empower clinicians to address cultural dimensions of engagement, diagnosis, and management. It aims to enhance their clinical cultural sensitivity and team capacity building rather than offering a cultural fix to the referrer including meeting with the subject/s of concern.
The service will be monitored through an evaluation and feedback form, Trust Audit officer, and senior clinical line managers.
Contact us
For discussing referrals please contact:
Professor Sushrut Jadhav, Lead Clinician,
4 Greenland Road, London NW1 0AS
Tel: 020 3317 6590
Email: sushrut.jadhav1@nhs.net
