Raghuram B. Bhat, MD, MA, FAPA is a board-certified psychiatrist, with additional board certifications in addiction medicine and geriatric psychiatry, as well as a Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. He is currently the Medical Director of an addiction treatment center in Southwest Washington. Prior to this, Dr. Bhat held a number of medical leadership roles in WA and NY, including serving as Medical Director of dual diagnosis outpatient clinics, Medical Director of a methadone clinic, and Chief Medical Officer of a community mental health organization. He has taught and mentored medical students, psychiatry residents, and addiction psychiatry fellows, as well as psychiatric nurse practitioners and other psychiatrists. He has been interviewed in both written and television news about his work providing medication-assisted treatment for underserved adults with opioid addiction.
Dr. Bhat believes in providing compassionate, patient-centered, trauma-informed medical and psychological care for clients suffering from addiction, within a team-based approach that utilizes the best available pharmacological and behavioral treatments. He has a special interest in understanding and treating the psychological trauma that often underlies addiction.
Dr. Bhat applied to the Community-Based Integrated Care Fellowship with the hopes of learning how the approach may be applied to help more persons in his community benefit from evidence-based treatments for addiction, perhaps by expanding the team-based approach, successfully used in addiction treatment centers, to a broader team including primary care physicians and other community health providers. In the more distant future, Dr. Bhat is hopeful that such a community-based integrated approach may be further expanded, beyond addiction treatment, to include those for whom psychological trauma may be underlying the course of their general medical conditions.