Fellow

Dr. S. M. Yasir Arafat

(Associate Fellow, 2024)

Dr. S. M. Yasir Arafat is currently working as an Associate Consultant of Psychiatry at Bangladesh Specialized Hospital, Dhaka, Bangladesh. He is an Associate Professor (Adjunct) of Frontier University Garowe, Somalia, a Senior Research Fellow of the Biomedical Research Foundation, Bangladesh, and an Honorary Research Fellow (October 2023-2025) of Dnet. He was affiliated with the University of Bristol, UK as a Visiting Senior Research Associate (August 2021–2023). He completed his MD in Psychiatry from Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University (BSMMU), Dhaka, and his MBBS from the Dhaka Medical College, Bangladesh. He also did an MPH in Health Economics and an MBA in Marketing. Dr. Arafat has (co)authored more than 350 peer-reviewed articles and more than 50 book chapters, and (co)edited more than 15 books with Springer. He is the leading editor of the book series “South Asian Perspectives in Mental Health and Psychology” with Springer which is the first book series on mental health in South Asia. He is an editorial member of more than 10 leading journals in mental health, published by Elsevier, Wiley, Springer, and Taylor and Francis. He is a Deputy Editor of Journal of Medical Case Reports (Springer).

Dr. Arafat’s research focused on mental health, suicide, psychometrics, panic buying, and psycho-sexual disorders. He is a pioneer in the research of suicide in Bangladesh, South Asia, and Muslim-majority countries. His He has been included in the global 2% researcher list in 2021, 2022, and 2023. He (co)edited two books on Panic Buying that are the first books on the topic in global academia.

Dr. Arafat has received Emerging Scholar Award by Common Ground Research Networks at Eighth International Conference on Health, Wellness & Society in 2018 at Imperial College, London, UK. He received the International Society for Sexual Medicine (ISSM) Scholarship to attend the ESSM School of Sexual Medicine program, Budapest, Hungary by ISSM in 2017. He was awarded Prof. Dr. M A Sobhan Award of Excellence for the Best Scientific Contribution in Mental Health in Bangladesh by the Alumni of Department of Psychiatry of BSMMU in 2024 and the Chancellor Gold Medal in 4^th convocation of BSMMU in 2023. He has also been nominated for the Prime Minister Gold Medal award for achieving the highest mark in the Faculty of Medicine in 2019 in BSMMU by the University Grant Commission, Bangladesh. In recognition of his valuable contributions to the field of research and development in the field of Medical & Health Sciences, he was awarded the BAS Dr. Sultan Ahamed Choudhury Gold Medal Award 2023.