Academic Credentials for Mental Health Professionals in Bangladesh

Bangladesh trains mental health professionals through five routes, and only one ends at a register you can search. This guide sets out what each qualification requires, who awards it, and where that is written.

Quick answer: which qualification leads where

Bangladesh gates one of these professions by statute and leaves the rest to universities. The table pairs each role with the qualification normally behind it and the body, if any, holding a register.

The last three rows surprise people, and they need care rather than a slogan. No council registers or licenses psychologists, counsellors or psychotherapists in Bangladesh. That is not the same as saying the law is silent about them, and the next section sets out what it does say.

What the law actually restricts, and what it does not

Two statutes do the work. Neither creates a psychology register, and both bind psychological practitioners in ways a credentials guide should not omit.

The Bangladesh Medical and Dental Council Act, 2010

Start with the statute, because the commonly cited one is wrong. The Council's governing law is the Bangladesh Medical and Dental Council Act, 2010, Act No. 61 of 2010. The earlier Medical and Dental Council Act, 1980 is still published on the Ministry of Law's laws portal, and its entry carries a note recording that it has been repealed by the 2010 Act.² Anyone citing the 1980 Act as the Council's mandate, including an overseas credential reviewer, is reading superseded law.

Section 22 of the 2010 Act is the practice restriction. Notwithstanding anything in any other law, no medical or dental practitioner may practise allopathic medicine without registration under the Act, or hold themselves out as a medical or, as the case may be, dental practitioner. Contravention is an offence carrying up to three years imprisonment or a fine of up to one lakh taka, or both.¹

Read that restriction carefully, because its edges matter. It reaches allopathic medical and dental practice and the act of presenting yourself as a doctor. It does not protect the word psychologist, and creates no licensing route outside medicine and dentistry. But a non-medical practitioner who describes themselves as a doctor of medicine, or who prescribes, is exposed under section 22 rather than merely in breach of etiquette. The Act separately makes it an offence for a registered practitioner to prescribe a government-prohibited drug.¹

The Mental Health Act, 2018

The Mental Health Act, 2018, Act No. 60 of 2018, dated 14 November 2018, repealed the Lunacy Act, 1912 and states that its provisions prevail over any other law in force.³ It matters to this page for three reasons.

First, it defines the professional class the universities train. Section 2(20) defines a mental health professional, or psychologist, as a person holding a degree from a recognised university as a clinical psychologist, educational psychologist or counselling psychologist, or as a psychologist specialising in mental health, together with those holding degrees and training from recognised universities and institutions in psychiatry, clinical psychology, psychiatric social work, occupational therapy, educational psychology, counselling, counselling psychology, psychotherapy and psychiatric nursing.³ The definition is anchored to a university degree. It is not anchored to a register, and the Act creates none. Section 2(17) separately defines a psychiatrist as a doctor with a postgraduate degree in psychiatry from a government-recognised institution who is registered with the Bangladesh Medical and Dental Council.³

Second, it attaches criminal and financial consequences to that class. A mental health professional who knowingly works in an unlicensed mental hospital may be fined up to one lakh taka. One who intentionally issues a false certificate about a person's mental illness faces up to three lakh taka or one year of rigorous imprisonment, or both. Any other contravention carries up to one lakh taka or six months. Offences are non-cognizable, compoundable and bailable, tried by a magistrate on the written report of the government or an officer it authorises.³

Third, it licenses the premises rather than the person. A mental hospital under the Act means a facility established under section 7 or licensed under section 8, being a mental hospital, mental illness treatment centre, mental clinic, drug addiction treatment centre, rehabilitation centre or shelter, by whatever name called. A private one may be run only under a government licence. Operating without one attracts up to five lakh taka, rising to twenty lakh on repetition, with closure and seizure available to the government.³

Two questions the Act does not settle, and this page will not pretend otherwise. Whether an individual practitioner's consulting room falls inside that definition of a mental hospital is not resolved on the face of the text. The definition and the licensing section point at each other: a mental hospital is a facility established under section 7 or licensed under section 8, so a room outside the licensing scheme is arguably outside the definition and therefore outside the offence, which is a circularity rather than an answer. Nor is the effect of section 2(6), which defines treatment as the administering of medicine, counselling or the provision of service under the supervision of a psychiatrist, or a government-approved scientific alternative treatment. Whether that definition constrains independent psychological practice outside a licensed facility is genuinely unsettled, and a practitioner who needs certainty needs Bangladeshi legal advice, not a directory page.

A note on the text used. Both statutes were read in Bengali on the Ministry of Law's portal in August 2026. Section 31 of the Mental Health Act requires an authentic English text and provides that where the two conflict the Bengali prevails.³ Penalties are amendable; confirm them against the portal.

Complaint routes, register searches and the regulatory picture in full are the subject of our companion guide, mental health licensing and regulation in Bangladesh. Where that guide and this one differ on which bodies hold statutory authority, the statutes cited above are the ones to follow.

Psychiatry: three routes, one register

Psychiatrists qualify as doctors first, and every specialist route runs through the same register. The entry qualification is the MBBS, and Council registration is the gate to practice under section 22 of the 2010 Act.¹

The three specialist qualifications

An acronym warning before anything else. On this page BCPS means the Bangladesh College of Physicians and Surgeons, a medical body. In Bangladeshi psychology writing the same three letters routinely mean the Bangladesh Clinical Psychology Society, a different organisation with no medical remit. The University of Dhaka's own clinical psychology curriculum uses BCPS for the Society.⁴ A credential that says BCPS tells you almost nothing until you know which body issued it.

The College and its qualifications

The Bangladesh College of Physicians and Surgeons was established by a Presidential Order in June 1972 and held its first examination in July of that year. The College records that the Presidential Order was made into the BCPS Act in 2018.⁸

The College's own schedule of fellowships sorts its general subjects into three duration bands, and Psychiatry sits in the longest. Eighteen general subjects take a five year fellowship, two take four years and seven take three, which is where the figure of twenty seven general subjects comes from. Psychiatry is one of the eighteen, and Child and Adolescent Psychiatry is a separate five year fellowship among the specialised subjects. Entry to the final examination in either runs through FCPS Part I in Psychiatry.⁹

The membership route is longer than it is usually described. The College's published eligibility criteria for membership examinations require a candidate to have completed at least five years after the MBBS or BDS and two years of training in the subject at an institute or hospital recognised by the College. Two alternatives exist: an MD or MS from Bangladesh Medical University, named in the 2022 criteria under its former title BSMMU, or from the University of Dhaka, the University of Chittagong or the University of Rajshahi in the relevant subject, or a diploma taken with two years of in-house training at the same university. Internship training is not accepted towards the MCPS.¹⁰

Both programmes are current. The College's July 2026 examination notification lists sixty five fellowship subjects, including Psychiatry and Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and sixteen membership subjects including Psychiatry. MCPS candidates must upload an up to date permanent registration certificate from the Council and an MBBS or BDS certificate it recognises, which is the register doing its work at the point of entry.¹¹

One university, two names

Bangladesh Medical University and Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University are one institution, not two. The university was renamed by Ordinance No. 12 of 2025, published on 13 April 2025 under Article 93(1) of the Constitution, which amended the Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University Act of 1998 by replacing the words Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib with Bangladesh. The gazette notification was issued on 16 April 2025 over the signature of the Registrar, Professor Dr Nazrul Islam.¹² The university's own account of itself runs further back: it began as the Institute of Postgraduate Medical Research in December 1965 and was converted into a medical university in 1998.¹³

The older name still appears widely, including in primary documents written before mid 2025, so a transcript naming BSMMU and one naming Bangladesh Medical University describe the same awarding body. The MD and MS residency programmes run there in a Phase A and Phase B structure, with admission and final examinations published separately for each.¹⁴

How long MD Psychiatry takes. The residency prospectus sets clinical faculty programmes at five years, and lists Psychiatry MD among them. Phase A runs two years and Phase B runs three.¹⁴

Clinical psychology: the Dhaka MS and MPhil

Clinical psychology runs through one department, and its curriculum is published in full, which makes it the most checkable qualification on this page.

The University of Dhaka's Department of Clinical Psychology treats the MS and MPhil as one integrated course leading to the qualifying degree. The MS component runs one and a half years and carries forty two credits, distributed as follows.⁴

The credit unit is defined rather than assumed. A four credit course carries 100 marks and sixty lecture hours, a two credit course 50 marks and forty lecture hours.⁴ That is the conversion an overseas assessor needs, and why the theory component is a larger body of taught work than the credit number suggests.

The internship, and who has to approve it

The clinical internship is eight credits and 200 marks, and it carries a published minimum of 800 hours in approved placements. The approved list names Bangladesh Medical University, which the curriculum still calls BSMMU, along with the National Institute of Mental Health, Dhaka Medical College Hospital and Dhaka Community Hospital, and allows other placements approved by the Council, provided they are also approved by the department and by the Bangladesh Clinical Psychology Society.⁴

That last clause is the most interesting sentence in the curriculum. The medical regulator has no authority over psychologists, yet its approval of a site is a condition of a clinical psychology placement counting. Regulation reaches the training where it does not reach the title.

The placement is specified rather than left open. Trainees must see the full age range from eighteen to over sixty five, at least one case in each of a published list of categories, and must have used a published list of techniques. Case load, records and professional conduct are separate requirements, and all clinical work is supervised.⁴

Work with children and adolescents, and specialist placements in addiction, health psychology, trauma and neuropsychology, sit in the MPhil years rather than the MS.⁴ A holder of the MS alone has not completed the same training as a holder of the integrated qualification, which is worth knowing before reading a CV.

Counselling psychology: the MS and the doctorate

Counselling psychology sits in a separate University of Dhaka department, Educational and Counselling Psychology, which publishes two postgraduate routes.

MS in Counselling Psychology

The programme page gives one year, thirty four credit hours across eleven courses. Its placement requirement is the largest on this page: a minimum of 1,500 hours of approved internship, 200 hours of them in direct service with clients, and 50 hours of supervised practice.⁵

Check that figure with the department before planning around it. Fifteen hundred hours inside a one year programme is a demanding shape, and the university publishes counselling curricula in more than one place. The figures above are what the department's own programme page stated when read for this guide. Ask which curriculum governs your intake year.

PhD in Educational and Counselling Psychology

The doctorate runs four years. Its first year requires two theoretical courses approved by the supervisor and a viva voce: Paper I on applying advanced psychological theory and Paper II on professional issues and therapeutic intervention, each 100 marks and one unit, then a third row in which the placement and the viva voce share a single further 100 marks and one unit. The published first-year total is 300 marks and 3.0 units. During the placement the trainee completes a minimum of 800 hours of approved internship, 600 hours of which are in direct service with clients, and 90 hours of supervised practice.⁶

The contrast with the master's is the point. The doctorate asks fewer total hours but far more direct client contact, 600 against 200, the difference between a placement built around exposure and one built around a caseload.

Mental health and psychosocial support

The newest route is the least familiar and, for humanitarian and development work, often the most relevant. BRAC University's Institute of Educational Development runs a Master of Science, and a Postgraduate Diploma, in Mental Health and Psychosocial Support. The MSc carries forty credits across fifteen months in three semesters, and was co-developed with the University of Tokyo.⁷

Entry is open in a way the psychology routes are not. A bachelor's degree in any discipline with fifteen years of total schooling is the base requirement, with a minimum second class or division, or a CGPA of 2.50, at every stage. Applicants sit a one hour written admission test, from which BRAC University graduates holding a CGPA of 3.0 or above are exempt, and an interview that is mandatory for everyone. The practical training runs as two embedded modules, a basic training and placement module and a supervised field placement, with a research and thesis writing capstone of five credits.⁷

Understand what this qualification is and is not. It is a real university-awarded master's in psychosocial support, built for a country running one of the region's largest humanitarian mental health responses. It is not a clinical psychology qualification and carries no supervised clinical caseload. Both facts matter when reading a practitioner's training.

Psychiatric social work, nursing and occupational therapy

Three further disciplines carry mental health roles, and this page can be honest about how thinly they are documented.

All three are named in the Mental Health Act's definition of a mental health professional: psychiatric social work, occupational therapy and psychiatric nursing appear in the same section 2(20) list as clinical, educational and counselling psychology, and the Act sets a qualification standard for none of them.³

The National Institute of Mental Health provides training across the group, describing itself as arranging training programmes for mental health professionals including psychologists, nurses, social workers and occupational therapists, alongside medical education for trainee physicians.¹⁶

What is missing is the specification. Course lengths, credit values and placement hours for these three are not published in a form that could be read at source, so no figures appear here. That absence is itself information: for these disciplines you are verifying an individual transcript, not a national standard.

Where the training happens

Five institutions carry most of the postgraduate training named on this page.

• University of Dhaka. Two separate departments, Clinical Psychology and Educational and Counselling Psychology, both publishing their curricula⁴⁵⁶
• Bangladesh Medical University, formerly BSMMU. The postgraduate medical university, running the residency programmes¹³
• Bangladesh College of Physicians and Surgeons. Not a university. An examining college awarding the FCPS and MCPS⁸
• National Institute of Mental Health. A specialised government hospital that is also a training institution, with inpatient capacity described as over 400 at a time and an outpatient department seeing roughly 400 to 500 people daily¹⁶
• BRAC Institute of Educational Development. The private sector entry, running the MHPSS route⁷

A newer training surface: universities as employers

The University Grants Commission and UNESCO have jointly run a student mental health programme, reported in October 2025 as reaching about 10,000 students across twenty two public and private universities, with services scheduled to begin that November and an intention to extend to a million students. The module was developed by a team led from the University of Dhaka's psychology department with colleagues at BUET and BRAC.¹⁷

The workforce these routes feed

These figures are dated, and the date is part of the number. The World Health Organization's Special Initiative for Mental Health situational assessment for Bangladesh, published January 2020, records a population of 162.7 million and this specialist workforce.¹⁵

The social worker row is not a typographical error. Three, nationally, against 162.7 million people. Any account of Bangladeshi mental health staffing quoting a round total of about 1,525 has reached it by adding the psychiatrists, psychologists and psychiatric nurses and dropping that row.

The same assessment puts adult prevalence at 18.7 per cent and child prevalence at 12.6 per cent, from the 2018 national mental health survey, with a treatment gap of 92 per cent among adults and 94 per cent among children, public spending of 0.08 US dollars per person, and traditional healers serving an estimated 40 per cent of people with mental health conditions.¹⁵

On training, it records formal postgraduate training for psychiatrists and psychologists, with district level medical providers receiving 85 days of mental health training and sub-district doctors and nurses 28 days.¹⁵ That is the shape of the system: a small specialist workforce, and a much larger general one given short courses.

Two cautions. These describe the position assessed for a January 2020 publication and are not a current count. And the assessment records the Strategic Plan 2020 to 2030 as finalised in 2020 but awaiting Ministry endorsement, and the National Mental Health Policy as approved by the Ministry in 2019 but awaiting Cabinet endorsement.¹⁵ Anyone describing either as fully in force should say on what evidence.

Checking a Bangladeshi credential

Here the split in section 1 becomes practical. One route can be checked against a register. The others are checked against a university and a document.

• A psychiatrist. Registration with the Bangladesh Medical and Dental Council is the statutory requirement, and the Council maintains the register under the 2010 Act.¹ The register is demonstrably operative: the College of Physicians and Surgeons requires an up to date permanent Council registration certificate from every candidate for a specialist examination.¹¹ Whether the Council offers a public online check is a separate question this guide could not settle, and section 10's closing note explains why²⁰
• A specialist medical qualification. The FCPS and the MCPS are awarded by the Bangladesh College of Physicians and Surgeons, and its published subject lists and eligibility criteria are the reference for what each involved⁹¹⁰
• A clinical or counselling psychologist. There is no register to search. What you can check is the degree, the awarding department, and whether the placement met the department's published minimum, which for the clinical MS is 800 supervised hours in an approved setting⁴
• A counsellor or psychotherapist. No register, no protected title, no minimum training standard. Ask what was studied, over how long, with how much supervised client contact, and where

The associations, and what they are not

Two membership bodies are worth knowing about, neither of them a regulator.

The Bangladesh Psychological Association is the national psychology body and the country's adhering member of the International Union of Psychological Science, with about 1,000 members.¹⁸ Its own website was under redevelopment when this guide was written, so its membership grades and any certificate it issues are not described here.

The Bangladesh Association of Psychiatrists is the psychiatrists' body. It runs courses and training materials, publishes national guidelines for mental disorders and position statements, and holds conferences.¹⁹

The Bangladesh Clinical Psychology Society is the third, and appears here because the University of Dhaka's curriculum gives it a role in approving clinical placements.⁴

Membership of any of the three is not a licence. Neither statute cited in section 2 gives an association power to register, license or strike off, and no association appears in either Act. A claim that association membership or certification is legally required for practice has no basis in the Bangladesh Medical and Dental Council Act, 2010 or the Mental Health Act, 2018.¹³

One check we could not stand behind. A registration-verification address for the Council is in circulation, and this guide deliberately does not tell you it works. The Council's domains are live but sit behind an automated bot challenge that refused every route tried.²⁰ A rendering service reached the address on 29 August 2026 and found a public Find Registration form behind that challenge. It is captcha gated, and the same challenge may stop you before you reach it. Treat an online check as worth attempting in a browser and not as something this page has confirmed. What is confirmed is the register itself, and that anyone entering a specialist examination has to produce a current certificate from it.¹¹

Our companion guide sets out how credentials compare across countries: see the international credential equivalency guide for mental health professionals, and the regional overview in our Asia-Pacific academic pathways hub.

Choosing a route, finding a therapist

Four questions narrow a training choice faster than any prospectus.

• Do you need to prescribe, or to be on a register? If yes the route is medical, starting with the MBBS and Council registration. Nothing else on this page leads there¹
• How much supervised client contact will you get? The published minimums differ sharply: 800 hours in an approved placement for the clinical MS, 200 direct service hours inside the 1,500 hour counselling internship, 600 in the doctorate⁴⁵⁶
• Clinical work or psychosocial? The MHPSS route is open to any first degree and built for humanitarian and development settings. The clinical route is built around a supervised caseload in hospital placements⁷⁴
• Will anyone verify this later? Ask what documentation the placement produces. Where there is no register, the transcript and the supervision record are the credential

Looking for a therapist rather than a training route, the same questions work in reverse. Ask which qualification the practitioner holds, which institution awarded it, and how much supervised practice it required. Where there is no register to check, a practitioner who answers those readily is telling you something useful.

TherapyRoute is a clinician-run directory founded by a clinical psychologist. Start with our guide on how to find the right therapist.

Last reviewed: August 2026. Jurisdiction: Bangladesh. Statutes were read in the original Bengali on the Ministry of Law's portal and are amendable; programme details, entry requirements and placement hours are set by institutions and change between intakes. Confirm with the institution and the relevant authority before relying on a credential.

Team TherapyRoute

References

1. [1] Bangladesh Medical and Dental Council Act, 2010 (Act No. 61 of 2010), s.22, headed "Allopathic treatment prohibited without registration": notwithstanding any other law, no medical or dental practitioner may practise allopathic medicine without registration under the Act, or hold themselves out as a medical or dental practitioner; contravention carries three years imprisonment or a fine of one lakh taka or both. s.30 makes it an offence for a registered practitioner to prescribe a government-prohibited drug, same maxima. Read in Bengali on the Ministry of Law portal, August 2026. bdlaws.minlaw.gov.bd (s.22); bdlaws.minlaw.gov.bd (s.30).
2. [2] The Medical and Dental Council Act, 1980 (Act No. XVI of 1980), Ministry of Law portal. The entry carries a Bengali note recording its repeal by the Bangladesh Medical and Dental Council Act, 2010 (Act No. 61 of 2010). The 1980 Act had itself repealed and re-enacted the Medical Council Act, 1973. bdlaws.minlaw.gov.bd.
3. [3] Mental Health Act, 2018 (Act No. 60 of 2018), dated 14 November 2018, repealing the Lunacy Act, 1912. Sections relied on: s.2(6) treatment; s.2(17) psychiatrist, requiring a postgraduate degree from a government-recognised institution and Council registration; s.2(20) the mental health professional or psychologist definition, by university degree across ten named disciplines; s.2(21) mental hospital, a facility established under s.7 or licensed under s.8; s.3 primacy; s.8 licensing of private mental hospitals; s.10(1) and (3) fines for unlicensed operation and for a professional knowingly working in an unlicensed facility; s.23(1) and (3) offences and penalties; s.24 magistrate trial and the non-cognizable, compoundable and bailable character of the offences; s.30 repeal; s.31 authentic English text, Bengali prevailing. Read in Bengali on the Ministry of Law laws portal, August 2026. bdlaws.minlaw.gov.bd.
4. [4] University of Dhaka, Curriculum of the Department of Clinical Psychology, MS (sessions 2020-21 to 2024-25), MPhil and PhD: "One and half years MS program... Students will take a total of 42 Credit for the MS Degree"; the credit and marks table (Theory 22/550, Clinical Work 10/250, Thesis 6/150, Seminar 2/50, Viva Voce 2/50, Total 42/1050), whose columns were summed rather than trusted; "Each four-credit course will be of 100 marks comprising of 60 lecture-hours, and two-credit course will be of 50 marks comprising of 40 lecture-hours"; CPSY 507 Clinical Internship at 8 credits and 200 marks; "Minimum of 800 hours internship in approved placements", the list naming BSMMU, NIMH, DMCH, Dhaka Community Hospital and "Other BMDC approved clinical placements (should also be approved by the Department of Clinical Psychology and Bangladesh Clinical Psychology Society)"; the age range, case categories and techniques; and the department's statement that it collaborates with the Bangladesh Clinical Psychology Society (BCPS). ssl.du.ac.bd.
5. [5] University of Dhaka, programme page, Master of Science in Counselling Psychology: duration "One Year", 34 credit hours across 11 courses, and "the trainees are required to complete a minimum of 1500 hours of approved internship, 200 hours of which are in direct service with clients, and 50 hours of supervised practice". du.ac.bd.
6. [6] University of Dhaka, programme page, PhD in Educational and Counselling Psychology: duration "4 Years"; the first-year requirement of "two theoretical courses as approved by their respective supervisors and a full unit Viva voce". The Year-I table was parsed from the page's raw HTML, because stripping the tags loses the row structure. It carries three weighted rows, not four: Paper I at 100 marks and 1.0 unit; Paper II at 100 marks and 1.0 unit; and a third row whose title cell holds both "Placement (Internship)" and "Viva Voce" against a single 100 and a single 1.0. The footer reads "Total = 300 3.0", so the placement carries no separate 100 marks. Also verbatim: "a minimum of 800 hours of approved internship, 600 hours of which are in direct service with clients, and 90 hours of supervised practice". du.ac.bd.
7. [7] BRAC University, BRAC Institute of Educational Development, M.Sc / PGD in Mental Health and Psychosocial Support: 40 credits over "15 months (3 Semester)"; "Co-developed with the University of Tokyo (UTokyo KOMEX-IOP)"; entry of a bachelor's degree in any discipline with fifteen years of schooling, and a minimum second class or division or CGPA 2.50 at all stages; the admission test verbatim, "All eligible applicants, except the BRACU graduates having a CGPA of 3.0 or above, are required to sit for the written admission test", in two parts, a one-hour written test and an interview, with "The interview is mandatory for all applicants"; and the two embedded practicum modules plus the five-credit research and thesis writing course. bracied.com.
8. [8] Bangladesh College of Physicians and Surgeons, home page: the College "was established by a Presidential Order in June 1972", held its first examination in July 1972, and "The Presidential order was made into the BCPS ACT in 2018". bcps.edu.bd.
9. [9] Bangladesh College of Physicians and Surgeons, Fellowship Program at a Glance, BCPS No.-339/2022/19994, 15 October 2022. The document sorts "General subjects (27)" into three duration bands, counted from its own enumerated lists: eighteen against "5 years fellowship", Medicine through Transfusion Medicine with Psychiatry as item 7; two against "4 year fellowship", Histopathology and Family Medicine; and seven against "3 year fellowship", the basic-science and community subjects. 18 plus 2 plus 7 is the 27, which counts all general subjects, not the five-year ones. Child and Adolescent Psychiatry is item 37 of "Specialized subjects (37)", also on "5 years fellowship". The entry table pairs "1) Psychiatry and 2) Child and Adolescent Psychiatry" with "FCPS Part-I in Psychiatry". bcps.edu.bd (PDF).
10. [10] Bangladesh College of Physicians and Surgeons, Eligibility Criteria for Membership Examinations, BCPS No.-339/2022/19993, 15 October 2022, signed by the Honorary Secretary. Psychiatry is one of sixteen MCPS subjects. Criteria: "Candidates have to complete at least 5 years after MBBS/BDS" and "Two years training in the respective subject in an Institute/Hospital recognized by BCPS", or an MD/MS under BSMMU, Dhaka, Chittagong or Rajshahi University, or a diploma with two years of in-house training under BSMMU; and "Internship training will not be accepted in MCPS examination". This supersedes the widely repeated claim that the MCPS requires one year of psychiatry training. bcps.edu.bd (PDF).
11. [11] Bangladesh College of Physicians and Surgeons, Notification for July 2026 Examination, BCPS No-339/2026/26194, 25 March 2026. Counted from its enumerated lists: 27 general plus 38 specialised fellowship subjects, the 65 the document itself prints, including Psychiatry (general item 7) and Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (specialised item 37); and 16 membership subjects including Psychiatry (item 7). MCPS applicants must upload "the up to date permanent registration certificate of BM&DC" and an "MBBS/BDS/equivalent recognized by BM&DC". bcps.edu.bd (PDF).
12. [12] The Business Standard, "Gazette published renaming BSMMU as Bangladesh Medical University", 16 April 2025: the gazette notification of 16 April 2025 signed by Registrar Professor Dr Nazrul Islam, citing Ordinance No. 12 of 2025 published 13 April 2025 under Article 93(1) of the Constitution, which amended the Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University Act (Act No. 1 of 1998) by replacing "Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib" with "Bangladesh"; and the Advisory Council's approval of the draft on 13 March 2025. An administrative fact, not a clinical one. tbsnews.net.
13. [13] Bangladesh Medical University, home page: the university's own account of itself, bearing the heritage of the Institute of Postgraduate Medical Research established in December 1965 and converted into a medical university in 1998. bmu.ac.bd.
14. [14] Bangladesh Medical University notice archive, admission and examination notices for the MD/MS Residency Program Phase-A and Phase-B. Cited for the two-phase structure. Programme lengths come from Bangladesh Medical University, Prospectus of Residency Program, 25 pp, which gives clinical faculty programmes as five years, Phase A two years and Phase B three years, and lists Psychiatry MD among its programmes. old.bmu.ac.bd; bmu.ac.bd (prospectus).
15. [15] World Health Organization, WHO Special Initiative for Mental Health, Situational Assessment: Bangladesh, January 2020. Context panel: "Population of 162.7 million"; adult prevalence 18.7% and child 12.6% (NMHS 2018); "Treatment gap for mental disorders 92% among adults and 94% among children". Human resources table: Psychiatrist 260 (0.2 per 100,000), Psychologist 565 (0.5), Psychiatric nurse 700 (0.4), MH social worker 3 (0), Neurologist 225 (0.1). Policies and plans: spending 0.08 USD per capita; the Policy approved by the Ministry in 2019, "Awaiting endorsement by Cabinet"; the Strategic Plan 2020-2030 "Finalized in 2020", "Awaiting endorsement by Ministry of Health and Family Welfare". Training: formal postgraduate training for psychiatrists and psychologists, 85 days for district-level general medical providers and 28 days for sub-district doctors and nurses. Community: traditional healers serve an estimated 40% of people with these conditions. who.int (PDF).
16. [16] National Institute of Mental Health, Dhaka, official site: a specialised government hospital providing "modern training and medical education through various departments for trainee physicians" and "modern and high-quality training programs for other mental health professionals, including psychologists, nurses, social workers, occupational therapists"; inpatient capacity over 400 at a time, with roughly 400 to 500 seen daily in outpatients. nimh.gov.bd.
17. [17] Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha (state news agency), 29 October 2025, on the UGC and UNESCO student mental health initiative: "10,000 students from 22 public and private universities", an intention to extend to a million, services beginning November 2025, and a module developed by a team led by Associate Professor Syed Tanvir Rahman of the University of Dhaka psychology department with BUET and BRAC colleagues. An administrative fact. bssnews.net.
18. [18] International Union of Psychological Science, national members entry for Bangladesh: the Bangladesh Psychological Association (BPA) as the adhering member, with 1,000 members and the bpa.org.bd address. That site displayed a "Website Under Development" placeholder when checked, so BPA's membership grades and certification practice are not described here. iupsys.net.
19. [19] Bangladesh Association of Psychiatrists, official site: membership, courses, educational curricula and training materials, "National guidelines for mental disorders", position statements, CMEs and its national and international conferences. bapbd.org.
20. [20] TherapyRoute regulator map, Bangladesh row: the house-canonical regulator name Bangladesh Medical & Dental Council (BM&DC), a registration-verification address at verify.bmdc.org.bd, and its Code of Professional Conduct. The row's status is recorded internally as targeted official research, not yet validated. UNVERIFIED, and stated as such on the page: both Council domains are live but return HTTP 403 with a Cloudflare challenge ("Just a moment...") to a direct request with a browser user agent, and a crawler run with a residential proxy and a real browser engine also failed, in the rewrite and again in the independent audit. A third-party rendering service reached the address on 29 August 2026 and returned a public Find Registration form, with a registration number field, a doctor type selector and a captcha. We did not reach it from the origin, so that observation is attributed rather than confirmed. The captcha rules out an automated check, and the challenge may stop a reader before the form loads. The register rests on references 1 and 11. verify.bmdc.org.bd.