Dr Akerele Raliat is a mental health specialist who has practised medicine for a decade. She is passionate about improving leadership for mental health systems and as such has held various roles in her local association of resident doctors for the purpose of organizing advocacy programs in communities and workplaces. She volunteers with different non-profits for the promotion of mental wellness and the prevention of mental ill-health.

Dr Akerele is an alumnus of Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago-iwoye where is graduated with a Bachelor in Medicine and Surgery. Intrigued by the centuries-old Cartesian concept of the mind and body being two separate entities, which prevailed despite a more realistic picture of the unity of mind and body for human functioning, she ventured into a residency in psychiatry at the Federal Neuropsychiatric Hospital, Yaba.

There she discovered mental illness is a global and economic burden with a huge treatment gap, to lend herself to the solution she undertook a masters in Global Mental health at the King’s College London as a commonwealth scholar and since then she has worked tirelessly in developing and implementing viable solutions to ensure equitable access to mental health services.