Psychiatrist Satya Dev Atreya reprimanded for relapse into alcohol abuse

June 10, 2011

On January 25, 2011, the New South Wales (Australia) Medical Council reprimanded psychiatrist Satya Dev  Atreya for engaging in unsatisfactory professional conduct. 

According to the Council’s Inquiry document, Atreya first came to the attention of the Council in 1986 and has had three alcohol-related incidents in relation to driving offenses and patient contact since then. 

Atreya apparently enrolled in the Council’s impaired practitioners program with abstinence from alcohol being a condition of his registration to practice but relapsed in 2007.

Among the three alcohol-related complaints against him was that he appeared at work on February 17, 2009 while intoxicated. 

He was charged and convicted in 2008 with disobeying a signal to stop for a breath test, failing/refusing to undergo a breath test and driving with middle range blood alcohol.  He’d also been convicted on similar charges in 1973, 1978 and 1984, among other convictions.

Among the conditions of his reprimand are that he must only work in a group practice and that he must obtain daily the permission to work from one of the other members of the practice.

Source: Professional Standards Committee Inquiry, complaint in relation to Dr. Satya Dev Atreya, Medical Council of New South Wales, 25 January 2011.