Raj Persaud hospital job mystery

Life just gets worse and worse for Raj Persaud (pictured), the disgraced celebrity psychiatrist. Since being convicted of dishonesty by a disciplinary tribunal in June – he admitted that he had plagiarised the work of other writers and academics for a number of his bestselling books – his lucrative media commissions have all but dried up. And now he has stepped down as a consultant psychiatrist for the South London and Maudsley NHS trust, a job he has held for 12 years, in circumstances that are somewhat mysterious.

His exit follows talks with the Maudsley this month when he was legally cleared to return to work after being struck off for three months by the General Medical Council. The tribunal had criticised him so heavily that there was widespread doubt at the time that he would be able to retain his consultant status.

So did he jump or was he pushed? A spokesman for the Maudsley was tight-lipped: "This is a private matter between the trust and Dr Persaud and I am afraid that we do not want to add anything to that." Persaud himself has yet to comment.

It is a dramatic reversal of fortune for Persaud, who made himself Britain's best-known "mind doctor". He was a regular on ITV's Good Morning programme and BBC Radio 4's All in the Mind, as well as a prolific contributor to newspapers and medical journals.

However, that came to an end when he made an enemy of the Scientology movement, who effectively orchestrated his downfall. The Citizens Commission on Human Rights, founded by the Scientologists, complained to the GMC that a hostile article by Persaud plagiarised several passages from another academic. The publicity then attracted claims from others and eventually led to his trial.