The “living legend” of Indian psychiatry, Professor NN Wig, 88, passed away on Thursday night at the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER), Chandigarh after a brief illness.

The Department of Psychiatry at the PGIME owes its existence to Prof Wig as he single-handedly brought the Department into being in 1963 and he continued to be intimately associated with the Department and the PGIMER as one of its Emeritus Professors till 12th July 2018.

Born on 1st October 1930 in the west Punjab district of Gujranwala, Prof Wig completed 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), Bangalore. 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 the Maudsley Hospital, Institute of Psychiatry, London and the Western Psychiatric Institute, Pittsburgh, U.S.A. He completed the Diploma in Psychological Medicine both from England and Scotland during this period.

Prof Wig joined the PGIMER in 1963 and headed the Department till 1980. Following this he was the Head of the Department of Psychiatry at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi.

From 1984 till 1990 he was the Regional Advisor for Mental Health at the Regional office of the Eastern Mediterranean (EMRO) of the World Health Organisation at Alexandria, Egypt. In this capacity, he contributed to the development of mental health programmes of 22 countries in the region.

Under his able leadership the Department of Psychiatry, PGIMER established itself as one of the leading training and research centres in the country. Prof Wig’s research has been pioneering in a number of ways.

Firstly, he was the first psychiatrist to focus on the understanding of course of mental disorders in India. Secondly, he led a number of multidisciplinary studies in consultation-liaison psychiatry with the Departments of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Nephrology, Paediatrics, Neurology etc.

Thirdly, he contributed to the classification of psychiatric disorders in India and at the International level. The continuing leadership of the Department in the above areas is a reflection of his futuristic approach to the research work.