Feb. 21 -- New Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center Professor and Chairman of the Psychiatry Department Dr. Rajendra Badgaiyan was drawn to the Permian Basin by the new behavioral health hospital being built between Odessa and Midland.
"That's very exciting prospect here. That is what I'm interested in, growing the department and making that hospital work," he said.
The Permian Basin Behavioral Health Hospital is expected to open in April 2026.
Badgaiyan will also be teaching and conducting research.
"In my career, I've published about 300 papers and (gotten) over $20 million research funding," Badgaiyan said.
He has five on site and 10 providing telehealth. With the new hospital, Badgaiyan said, they will be hiring 20 to 25 psychiatrists and expanding their residency training program.
Right now, they take four residents every year. This year they are going to increase that to six with a grant he received. If he receives a second grant, they could have eight residents. Next year, there will be 10 residents.
They are also hiring experts in the field as adjunct professors and most of them are from Harvard. They have agreed to teach virtually and on-site. He is planning to invite one expert a month and someone who is an international expert in a particular area.
He also wants to expand the fellowships in psychiatry. Right now there is a fellowship in child psychiatry. Badgaiyan wants to start one in forensic psychiatry, in addiction psychiatry and geriatric psychiatry.
"There is a need. Only about 10% of the people who need psychiatrists get to see psychiatrists," Badgaiyan said.
The new hospital is what drew Badgaiyan to West Texas.
"That's a big challenge, and it would be very good for the people living in this part of the state where there are not many medical facilities available between Dallas and El Paso. We are the only one in a lot of rural areas," Badgaiyan said.
He added that there are more psychiatric issues in a rural area.
"They don't see a psychiatrist because of the stigma. They don't want to disclose that they have psychiatric illness. That's a big challenge. We have to educate the people here, and that is what I plan to do ... There shouldn't be any stigma about psychiatric illness. It's like any other disease, we get psychiatric diseases. It's important to get an early treatment. It's easy to treat condition when you treat early in the disease process rather than late in the process," Badgaiyan said.
"We are trying to spread that word and to begin to do very intense community outreach ... to educate people. We also have a podcast we do every week on different psychiatric issues for the general public," he added.
The podcast is called Mental Munchies. He said they emphasize that people should get treatment as soon as possible.
Badgaiyan said his specialty is addiction.
"Addiction is a big problem, and addiction is a problem everywhere. It's not an exception. But the problem here is there is no treatment facility, or good treatment facility, for addiction here, so in the new hospital, that is what we're going to do. We're going to prioritize opening" an addiction treatment center, he added.
Addiction is an issue across the board and it's an epidemic across the country. Last year, 120,000 people died of drug overdoses.
"My heart goes out to them. Its' just a waste of life, and we are only talking about those who are officially recorded as overdose deaths. There are many unrecorded ones. They are all preventable deaths," Badgaiyan said.
There are many people who have spoiled their lives, their family lives and their professional lives because of drugs.
"Many of my patients ... have got a lot of those stories," Badgaiyan said.
Badgaiyan has been practicing for 25 years. He spent his residency and more than 10 years as a faculty member at Harvard Medical School. He has also been the Chair of Psychiatry at a Mt. Sinai affiliated hospital in New York City, Chief of Psychiatry at South Texas Veterans Health Care System in San Antonio and Chairman of Psychiatry at Case Western Reserve University before returning to Texas.
His research focus is on addiction and dysregulation of dopamine neurotransmission in psychiatric and neurological conditions. He is known for developing a unique brain imaging technique to study chemical changes in the human brain. The Mayo Clinic website says dopamine is a chemical messenger in the brain that regulates movement and emotional responses.
He has previously been awarded The Solomon Prize from Harvard University and B.K. Anand National Research Prize in India.
There were a couple of reasons Badgaiyan chose psychiatry.
He was initially interested in researching the mind and how the brain works.
"Then I got interested in patients (that) have a problem with cognition. I did lot of research on cognitive processing and how the brain processes different mental functions. Then I got interested in knowing those patients, what those patients really feel. Then I got into the residency program. I got the residency position at Harvard so I finished my residency there. I was in their faculty and still doing a lot of research along with seeing patients," Badgaiyan said.
He added that there are many psychiatric conditions for which there really aren't any treatments.
"We suppress symptoms, we don't cure those diseases. That's another challenge to find a way to cure those diseases with research. I spend a lot of time doing research on those issues," Badgaiyan said.
He's focused on addiction right now, because that is one condition that is curable.
"There are very few things in psychiatry that you can cure; addiction is one of those. I'm focusing on addiction. I've come up with different models how to treat people with addiction, and some of those models have been very successful. ... We follow the patient after treatment for three years," Badgaiyan said.
In three-year follow up, they had a 93% success rate, which is a "very good outcome, particularly with addiction.
"That means 93% of patients, they were sober for three years after the treatment, which is a very good outcome, particularly with the addiction," he said.
They are going to implement some of those treatments at the new hospital.
"Very few people have access to psychiatrists, particularly the rural areas," Badgaiyan said.
He added that he has been involved in opening new hospitals previously.
Badgaiyan said he enjoys it because it helps the population.
"That gives me a pleasure, actually, that I'm able to help people. That is my way of giving back to society. ... I want to use my experience to make sure that the facility that I'm opening serves more people and ... offers better treatment modularity and better patient access," Badgaiyan said.