UK TV psychiatrist Raj Persaud "unfit to practice"

LONDON (Reuters Life!) - British psychiatrist and popular TV chat show guest Dr Raj Persaud has been found unfit to practice after he admitted plagiarizing other people's work, Britain's General Medical Council said on Friday.

He admitted copying four pieces of work for his 2003 book "From the Edge of the Couch" during a GMC disciplinary hearing in the northern English city of Manchester this week.

The former presenter of the BBC Radio 4 program "All in the Mind" also admitted copying passages from two other pieces of work in a series of newspaper articles and journals.

He had denied dishonesty, but the GMC said he must have known what he was doing. In a written ruling, it said Persaud's actions were liable to bring the profession into disrepute.

He had claimed he was in a confused mental state at the time of writing the work because of the pressure of juggling his National Health Service and media work.

"Your dishonest conduct brings the profession into disrepute and the Panel has... concluded that your fitness to practice is impaired by reason of your misconduct," the GMC said in a judgment released on Friday.

Persaud is a consultant psychiatrist at the Bethlem Royal and Maudsley Hospitals and professor for Public Understanding of Psychiatry at Gresham College in London.

In 2002, he was voted one of the top 10 psychiatrists in the UK by a survey of the Institute of Psychiatry and the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

He was resident psychiatrist on the daytime TV show "This Morning" and has appeared on the long-running "Richard & Judy" chat show. He has written regularly for The Daily Telegraph and The Independent newspapers.

(Reporting by Andrew Hough and Avril Ormsby; Editing by Peter Griffiths and Paul Casciato)