Nav is Professor of Psychiatry and Population Health at the University and an Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist at Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust.  He is Director of the National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Safety in Mental Health and Head of Research at the Centre for Mental Health and Safety. 

Nav is a member of the National Suicide Prevention Advisory Group (England) and helps to lead a major NHS England Quality Improvement Initiative focussed on suicide prevention. 

He has held a number of roles for NICE including chairing the development groups for the NICE self-harm guidelines and Quality Standards.  He was also topic expert for the NICE suicide prevention guideline. Most recently he chaired the Guideline Committee for the NICE depression in adults guideline and was Expert Topic Advisor for the new NICE self-harm guideline. 

He is academic programme lead for the Integrated Academic Training Scheme (Walport Scheme) in Psychiatry.   

Nav has published over 400 peer reviewed papers (https://scholar.google.co.uk).  He is the lead author of Suicide Prevention (Oxford University Press 2019 https://global.oup.com/academic/product/suicide-prevention-9780198791607?lang=en&cc=gb), a single volume primer on the science and practice of preventing suicide.   

He is the recipient of two of the most important global awards for suicide prevention  -  the International Association for Suicide Prevention Stengel Research Award for outstanding research in the field of suicidology (https://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/news/researcher-bags-second-global-award-for-suicide-prevention/) and the American Association of Suicidology Louis I. Dublin lifetime achievement award for suicide prevention (https://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/news/academic-gets-one-of-worlds-top-awards-in-suicide-prevention/).  Several of his papers have won awards including the British Journal of General Practice Research paper of the year.  

In 2025 he was awarded Honorary Fellowship of the Royal College of General Practitioners, the College's highest honour, for outstanding contributions to general practice (https://www.manchester.ac.uk/about/news/university-professor-honoured-by-royal-college-of-general-practitioners/)

Nav is currently Professor of Psychiatry and Population Health at the University of Manchester and an Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist within the NHS in the UK.  He qualified in medicine from the University of Leeds in 1992. He then trained as a psychiatrist in Leeds and Manchester. He was Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, and Reader in Psychiatry at the University of Manchester and took up his current post in 2008.

Nav’s research focuses on the aetiology, treatment and prevention of suicidal behaviour. His main areas of research are:

• The National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Homicide which collects data on all individuals in the United Kingdom who have died by suicide and obtains detailed information from clinicians on all those who have had contact with mental health services in the year prior to death.

• The MaSH Project which collects data on all those who have harmed themselves (by self-poisoning or self-injury) and present to hospital services in the city of Manchester. He is also the Manchester lead for a multi-centre programme of work with colleagues in Oxford and Derby http://cebmh.warne.ox.ac.uk/csr/mcm/

• NIHR Patient Safety Translational Research Centre and NIHR Programme Grants. These work packages aim to improve the quality and safety of care that mental health patients receive, develop new interventions, and inform the clinical and policy suicide prevention response.  Further information is available here http://www.patientsafety.manchester.ac.uk/ here https://www.bristol.ac.uk/population-health-sciences/projects/suicide-prevention/ and here https://blogs.city.ac.uk/assured/about-assured/.   

He also led the suicide component of an additional NIHR Programme Grant into Bipolar Disorder

• Other research areas:
- Suicide and physical illness
- Epidemiology of self-harm in the general population and population impact of risk factors.
- Suicide in the military
- The medical management of overdose as a strategy to reduce suicide deaths
- Understanding geographical influences on rates of suicide
- Developing comprehensive aetiological models of suicidal behaviour incorporating clinical, psychological and biological measures.
- The aetiology and treatment of abnormal illness behaviour.

Other academic activities:

Nav acts as an expert reviewer for leading academic journals and grant giving bodies and has contributed to a number of clinical guidelines (such as NICE, WHO, and BAP guidelines). He is a Member of the Scientific Advisory Council for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and an elected Fellow of the International Academy of Suicide Research. He also acts as an expert advisor to the media on suicide and suicidal behaviour. 

• 1992 MB ChB, University of Leeds
• 1996 MRCPsych, Royal College of Psychiatrists
• 1997 MMedSc University of Leeds
• 2001 Certificate of Completion of Specialist Training (CCST) in General Adult Psychiatry with endorsement in Liaison Psychiatry
• 2002 MD, University of Manchester
• 2008 FRCPsych, Royal College of Psychiatrists