Viral Kantaria

Senior Programme Manager, Adult Mental Health, NHS England

Viral is a Senior Programme Manager in the NHS England Adult Mental Health Team leading on community mental health services, older people’s mental health care and ‘personality disorder’. He is responsible for developing and delivering the NHS Long Term Plan’s proposals for “new and integrated models of primary and community mental health care” for adults and older adults with severe mental illnesses.  He has in the past worked on mental health crisis care and joined NHS England in 2016 from the Department of Health, where he worked on crisis care and mental health legislation. Before that he worked in the Private Office of coalition government health and social care ministers Paul Burstow followed by Norman Lamb, which ignited his passion for mental health care as a matter of social justice.