Psychiatric Bulletin (2003) 27: 398. doi: 10.1192/pb.27.10.398
© 2003 The Royal College of Psychiatrists
Psychiatric Bulletin (2003) 27: 398
© 2003 The Royal College of Psychiatrists
Kunal Raychaudhuri
Formerly Consultant Psychiatrist, Hollymoor Hospital, Birmingham
T. W. Fenton
Kunal Raychaudhuri died, aged 74, on 9 January 2003. Born in 1928 in
Berhampur, India, Kunal was proud to belong to the land of his birth, but
equally proud to have acquired British citizenship after being long domiciled
in the UK.
He studied at Calcutta University, where he took his MSc and later, in
1955, his MB BS. After working in house jobs, he joined the Indian Army in
1957 on a short-term commission. On completing his army service in 1960, he
came to the UK and for the next 3 years worked as a senior house officer and
registrar in psychiatry at Cefn Coed Hospital in Swansea. He then took up an
appointment as psychiatric registrar at Leverndale Hospital, Glasgow where he
worked until 1966. Having obtained the DPM qualification, he moved on to
Glenside Hospital in Bristol as Medical Assistant. There he came under the
potent influence of Donald Early and his pioneering work in rehabilitation
psychiatry, and established himself as a valued member of the Glenside
team.
In 1972, Kunal was appointed Consultant Psychiatrist with a special
interest in rehabilitation and community care at Hollymoor Hospital,
Birmingham. This was one of the earliest specialist posts of its kind
established in the West Midlands. In the course of the next few years, he
applied the Bristol template with great vigour and determination to the
hospital's long-stay population and to the building of a supportive community
network to enable resettlement. Truly, his was a pioneering role in the
evolution of rehabilitation psychiatry in the West Midlands. In addition to
his main field of endeavour, he took a full share in the acute service and was
an active participant in the decision-making bodies of the hospital and of the
hospital group that managed it. Kunal was popular with his colleagues, who
held him in much affection for his engaging personal qualities, his readiness
to bear his full share of the burden and heat of the day, and his wholehearted
commitment to the aims and purposes of the team. His patients liked and
respected him, knowing that he would do his best for them. He retired from the
Health Service in 1988.
A strong and active supporter of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, he
served the College well, and during the last decade of his working life was
Secretary of the West Midlands Division, a Member of Council, and a Member of
the Public Policy Committee and of the Programmes and Meetings Committee. He
was elected to Fellowship in 1987. He was active too in the Overseas Doctors
Association and was honoured to take on the responsibility of being its
Welfare Officer.
A man who loved life and lived it to the full, he was deeply engaged with
his work and with his leisure pursuits. A fine cook, he much enjoyed and was
knowledgeable about food. He took great pleasure from periodic visits to the
West End theatres, was a keen student of the turf and relished a modest
flutter. In his youth, Kunal had been a talented cricketer, wicket-keeper and
captain of the cricket team at his medical college, and he retained a lifelong
love of the great game, channelled in his mature years into a devotion to the
fortunes of the Warwickshire County Cricket Club, and of course of the Indian
National Team. He was a fine hockey player too, and gained his
‘blue’ at University.
Kunal was a very strong and positive personality, who had definite views
and expressed them with conviction. Outgoing and extraverted in temperament, a
generous nature and large of spirit, he was very definitely a social animal,
had many friends and was very loyal to them. His friends found him to be a
very endearing character whom they held in great affection, and whose
comradeship they were proud to enjoy. Sadly, Kunal and Myra's marriage, which
began in 1963, ended in divorce, but they remained very good friends over all
the years. A kind and loving father, Kunal was devoted to his daughters Sima
and Anjuli, and they to him.
Time and again, in the latter part of his life, Kunal battled courageously
against serious illness, undergoing major surgery on several occasions, and
facing all of these vicissitudes with resolution and fortitude. Those who were
part of his circle grieve for the losing of him, and count themselves
fortunate indeed to have shared his life's path.
