Prof Wig, doyen of Indian psychiatry, passes away at 88

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, July 13

Prof NN Wig, the doyen of psychiatry in India who founded the Psychiatry Department at the PGI in 1963, passed away on Thursday. Professor Wig (88) breathed his last at 11 pm at the PGI following a brief illness.

His cremation will take place at 2 pm at the Sector 25 cremation ground on Saturday. A prayer meeting for the departed soul will be held on Sunday at Laxmi Narayan Mandir in Sector 6, Panchkula.

Born on October 1, 1930, in the West Punjab district of Gujranwala (now in Pakistan), Professor Wig did his MBBS from KG Medical College, Lucknow, in 1953 and MD (Medicine) from Lucknow University in 1957.

He pursued his interest in psychiatry by training at the All India Institute of Mental Health (now NIMHANS), Bengaluru.

On his return, he joined the medical college at Lucknow as a lecturer in neuropsychiatry. It is here that he started the first general hospital psychiatry unit in India.

For two years (1961-62), he was on a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship and received training at Maudsley Hospital, Institute of Psychiatry, London, and the Western Psychiatric Institute, Pittsburgh, US.

He completed a diploma in

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