My path to a career in the field of Psychology was initiated early in high school while coordinating the Neighbourhood Project at my school Sardar Patel Vidyalaya, which aimed to promote holistic development of underprivileged children. While the program aimed to bridge the gap in the quality of education they received and impart life skills - it was here, that I was struck by the unawareness of society towards issues of mental health and developmental difficulties and the subsequent stigma attached to it.

While pursuing an undergraduate degree in Psychology (Hons) at Kamala Nehru College, University of Delhi, I volunteered at Sanjivini Society’s Rehabilitation Center for persons diagnosed with schizophrenia. This helped me understand individual and family aspects of living with mental illness.

In the summer of my final year of undergraduate program, I volunteered at Dr. Swathi Kiran’s Aphasia Research Laboratory at Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, Boston University. As a research assistant, I developed a computer assisted homework model for aphasia patients. When not working on my new homework project and learning a new experiment design software- EPrime, I spent my free time observing FMRI and speech therapy sessions, attending lab meetings and sharing inputs on research findings of other lab members. The fast paced and impact driven lab environment, free exchange of ideas and collaborative nature of work left me feeling energized and wanting more. I immensely enjoyed my time in the lab and I decided then itself that this was definitely what I want to work towards.

Having realised that I want to pursue a research career in Psychology and contribute towards mental health and society at large, I chose to pursue a Master of Arts degree in Counselling at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai (TISS). TISS is one of the few institutes in the country, which offers a balanced integration of research, coursework and clinical training. The municipal hospital - Lokmanya Tilak Memorial Hospital, where I interned - serves as a subsidised treatment centre for the Indian population and hence treats as many as 150+ patients on a daily basis in the psychiatry out patient department alone. This was my opportunity to learn how to build a rapport with a variety of patient populations from across a wide range of socio-economic strata and learn optimum resource management in the face of scarcity. I learnt that it was important to take into account the context of a patient while planing psychological interventions and many gaps still existed in how to provide effective interventions to resource - scarce, underserved populations.

During my Masters, I also interned at the Family court in Mumbai for a semester under a Marriage Counsellor. My primary responsibilities were to counsel couples experiencing marital discord or separation at pre-litigation and litigation stages. While working to create a non-threatening environment for all family members to share their perspectives, brought about a major change in my understanding of the therapeutic space, which expanded beyond just focus on individual client’s well being. Additionally, I worked on a research project to investigate changing trends in family litigations, which broadened my understanding of mental health to include laws and how they affect mental well being in couple systems by allowing certain behaviors while punishing others.

During my postgraduate counseling course, I spent three semesters (out of the total four) as a counseling intern at the Kripa Foundation - the largest NGO in India working on issues of addiction and HIV infection. Kripa was the first setting where I developed therapeutic relationships with the group, the clients and their families, and had the opportunity to do consistent and sustained work at individual and family levels through bi-weekly group and individual counseling sessions.

The disease model approach to addiction that I learnt during my internship at Kripa, inspired me to explore clinical psychology further and I opted to intern as a psychologist-in-training under Dr. Iqbal Ahmed, District Mental Health Officer in the remote Himalayan region of Ladakh. Ladakh district lies to the north-west of the Himalayan state of Jammu and Kashmir and mostly constitutes a high altitude desert with low population density that is cut off from the rest of India for majority of the winter months due to heavy snowfall. Dr. Ahmed is the only psychiatrist in the district, practicing at the sole hospital in the region. Getting to see how little is understood about mental health and the limitations of current models in that context, further strengthened my interest to make mental health services accessible to marginalized or often overlooked populations. Dr Ahmed also introduced me to the staff at Munsel society school for children with special needs run by a Swiss group as the only school for differently-abled children in the region. The staff entirely consisted of local women who lacked any formal training in special education. They relied on pooling their resources to train one individual through attending workshops in larger Indian cities who in turn came back and trained the others. Their model inspired me to look beyond the dearth of resources and towards the possibility of innovative solutions. At this point I became even more certain that I wanted to pursue higher training in mental health field.

Thereafter I dedicated subsequent year to learning more about graduate schools and testing my preparedness to take on the serious commitment of a graduate student.

I opted to work as a Patient Care Counsellor at Medanta the Medicity hospital - one of India’s largest multi super-speciality institutes. There, I worked weekly with children diagnosed with cancer and their families. In collaboration with the Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery department and Breast Services Clinic, I worked on body image issues for women who underwent mastectomy surgeries. Working at one of the country’s premier institution in the National Capital Region of India exposed me to a variety of populations with both medical and psychological issues. Working in this busy and critical setting pushed me to re-conceptualize risk and resilience factors that worked in the here-and-now of a health adversity and work hard towards increasing awareness of the importance of balanced approach to well-being with a team of highly trained doctors and nursing staff.

Having tried out the real world of clinical practice I wanted to ensure that I could sustain myself through long hours and rigors of a profession in research. And so I began to work with Dr. Deepa Narayan for her book project titled ‘What it means to be a woman in India.’ I have been working as her Research Associate carrying out extensive literature review, conducting qualitative interviews with women and gender & mental health experts and analyzing these highly varied interviews.

All these experiences in the counseling and research world, have only whetted my appetite even more and I am all the more eager to build myself a career in the field of mental health to be better equipped to engage with the current state of mental health in my country as a researcher, academician, trainer and policy advocate. In this endeavour I hope to take the next step by pursuing graduate studies in Psychology. :)

Education

June 2009- May 2012 : Bachelor’s student, Kamala Nehru College, University of Delhi
Degree obtained: B.A. (Hons) in Psychology

June 2012- May 2014 : Master’s student, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai
Degree obtained: M.A. in Counselling

CERTIFICATIONS

Qualified University Grants Commission - National Eligibility Test for Assistant Professorship in Indian Universities (Dec 2013)
Currently under training for EMDR therapy Level 1 and registered member of EMDR Association of India
Basic Counselling Skills certificate from ADIVA Healthcare Hospital, New Delhi (2010)

Having made up my mind to pursue a doctoral degree in psychology, I wanted to test and develop my research skills in the real world. For nearly one year now, I have been working with Dr. Deepa Narayan, for her book project titled ‘What it means to be a woman in India’. Deepa is an independent international poverty, gender and development advisor and writer with over 25 years of experience of working at the World Bank, the UN, and several NGOs.

While working for this book project, I have done vast amounts of literature review and have analysed over 80 qualitative interviews. Apart from learning to organize, store and evaluate large amounts of interview data, this project has also taught me to identify and streamline major common themes in highly varied interviews, effective interviewing skills and techniques and how to manage my time across the many tasks at hand. The different perspectives and experiences of women from a wide range of socio-cultural backgrounds, explored by gender, mental health and business experts, have made me even more aware of the diverse life situations of women in India and have also given me insights into how mental health practitioners can contribute to their well being and their evolving role in the society.

For my Master thesis, I designed an exploratory study on the experiences of Indian emerging adults who had moved to Germany to pursue higher education. I felt that while some limited literature existed on experiences of Indian students in other popular countries, there was a gap in the understanding of experiences of Indian students in Germany. The study aimed to find answers in two main areas - the students’ perception of what changes had they noticed in themselves since entering emerging adulthood and whether they attributed these changes to internal maturation process or external change in the cultural context.

The process of first designing the pilot study and interview guide, recruiting the participants via emails and the proposal defence, was truly an exciting and enriching experience. It taught me the importance of choosing a topic that excites me and how being open minded while welcoming suggestions and critique from others, are key to the research process. During the early summer of 2013, I conducted in-depth interviews with masters and doctoral Indian students in Saarbruecken, Germany. Due to the limited the number of days I was in Germany I had to learn to coordinate multiple interview sessions with different students (who also lived very hectic grad student lives!) in a day. This was my biggest challenge and thank god for phone calendars and excel spreadsheets! Over that time I conducted interviews in quiet science labs, ice-cream cafes, gymnasiums, parks and conference rooms. Starting the analysis phase on coming back to India increased my excitement about my thesis even more. While transcription and coding can be time consuming and energy draining, the thrill of drawing out themes and subthemes kept me going in full swing. I also made use of qualitative analysis softwares which made the process faster. During the school and external defence I was not only able to present major change areas for Indian emerging adults in Germany, but I also presented an ecological framework of the levels of influence as perceived by the students as contributing to the changes they experienced. A larger study of these personal, interpersonal, institutional and cultural influence factors could in turn be used to prepare effective guidelines for pre-departure counseling and more culturally appropriate counseling models for foreign students in Germany.

During the internship at Family Court as a Marriage and Family Counsellor, I also conducted a large scale research study to analyze the ‘Trends in Family Litigation’ for the year 2012 and compared the data to trends observed two decades earlier in 1990s. This study helped me to understand the significance of attention to detail required in quantitative research for handling the recording and statistical analysis of large scale data. I also gained greater insight into family litigation and divorce, inheritance and domestic violence laws of the country and how they influence grounds of divorce seeking, child custody issues etc. This study was later appreciated by both - the legal as well as social work wings of the court and reviewed in their internal newsletter.

In the summer of my second year of undergraduate program, I volunteered at Dr. Swathi Kiran’s Aphasia Research laboratory at Boston University. Dr. Kiran and her team aim to understand language processing and communication following brain damage, through innovative research, developing new therapy modules and rehabilitation work. I worked individually on a project to develop a software delivered homework practice module for speech practice for the aphasia patients. This required me to learn a new programming language (Visual Basic) and to understand and borrow from practices and procedures of computer aided experiment design. The homework program used a large database of everyday words grouped into verbal categories and their extensive feature lists, each of which was delivered on the screen based on the category being practiced and the level of expertise of the patient. Seeing real world implementation of my work over the summer was hugely motivating and I was hooked to the world of labs and research from that moment onwards. In addition to working on my individual project I also got to experience and understand how a research lab works and the various roles and responsibilities of lab members. I was most excited to see the dynamic nature of the lab meetings and the incessant flow of ideas and opinions that made working in the lab a challenging and yet invigorating experience. My colleagues also generously let me observe their speech therapy and FMRI sessions which helped me understand the relationship between the brain and the behaviour outside of books for the first time.

Having trained in counseling psychology, I worked as a counselor in one of India’s largest multi-super speciality hospitals. The hospital was in the nascent stages of planning to provide mental health support to its 1250 inpatients beds and over 350 critical care patients units. As a part of the core mental health team, I was part of building visibility, awareness and relationships with its multiple departments, which included providing addiction counseling in Gastroenterology and Liver transplant department, counseling for body image and trauma issues in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery department, diabetes counseling, suicide prevention counseling in critical care units, preoperative counseling and family debriefings and mental status examinations.

Eventually I started working exclusively with the Oncology department where I counseled children and adolescents diagnosed with cancer and their families, helped women with body image and self esteem issues post mastectomy surgery, carried out lifestyle management counseling for radiation therapy patients, provided end of life care for last stage patients and facilitated fortnightly support groups for parents and family members of the patients.

Being in such a large scale medical environment helped me learn about hospital administration functions as well as develop skills as a liaison between mental health and other medical departments. I was also able to devise processes to include family members in post discharge care of patients as well as promote caregiver well being through support groups. Working closely with families of cancer patients helped me adopt a broader perspective of care services and see in practice the role family can play in the well being of an individual. Working closely with the administrative staff on development of psychological support services in case of emergency and trauma units with a particular emphasis on suicidal patients helped me further the dialogue on the role of nurses in providing psychological first-aid.

I interned under the District Mental Health Officer - Dr. Iqbal Ahmed, in one of the most underserved districts in India- Ladakh, situated high in the Himalayan state of Jammu and Kashmir. Dr. Ahmed is the only psychiatrist at the sole hospital in the region. I worked under him in the Psychiatry Out Patient Department with patients who sometimes travelled as much as two days to reach the hospital. I usually held bi-weekly individual counseling sessions in the OPD and worked on a variety of cases such as mood disorders, trauma, substance abuse, eating disorders, schizophrenia and anxiety disorders. Since most schools are situated in Leh city, children from all over the region come and live in hostels to attend school. So apart from individual counselling for adolescents coming to the ARSH (Adolescent Reproductive and Sexual Health) clinic, I also held psychoeducational group sessions on relevant issues such as exam stress, homesickness, relationship issues, intimacy etc. During most afternoons, post OPD work I carried out psychological assessments at the pediatric unit for special children in the hospital and at the Munsel Society School for children with special needs - a local school run by a Swiss charity group with entirely local staff. While the staff wasn’t formally trained, the teachers made the most of the resources they had and learnt from volunteers and few workshops they could attend in larger Indian cities. As part of a two member team, I held teaching sessions for the teachers on various developmental disorders and theory of developmental psychology and held discussions on their current strategies and possible improvements.

Kripa is the largest non government organization in India working on addiction and HIV infection in collaboration with Union Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, Government of India. As part of a two member team I conducted weekly group sessions for residents of the rehabilitation center on issues of addiction, mental hygiene, change processes, relapse prevention and HIV awareness while working in parallel with the family members of the residents on addiction literacy, post discharge scenarios, self care and crisis intervention. This practice made me understand the important role family support can play in relapse prevention. My work with the families also included addressing marital couple issues between the recovering addict and their spouse. This multi-pronged approach was designed to address socio-emotional triggers as an addition to the medical detox and other pharmacological treatments. I also visited Kripa’s home for runaway children, located in Dharavi - one of the largest slum areas in the world. Working with children in this setting involved more than addiction counseling and I learnt that on my first day there, when a 9 year old boy showed me his makeshift drug paraphernalia from discarded trash. Most children were runaways, living on the street and had developed addiction habits, but the home manager was helping them become sober, obtain necessary paperwork to start school again and connecting them with local employers. I mainly worked with these children on issues of self concept, identity, ambitions and life skills development.

My work at the C.U. Shah Home for Senior Citizens introduced me to the new terrain of Geriatric Psychology. It was a challenge to figure out what support to give to the residents. In my conversations with them, I noticed that ‘losing my mind’ and ‘feeling slowed down’ was a significant source of anxiety for many of them and so I chose to work with these anxieties by holding weekly group sessions. This became a space to share and understand these anxieties and discuss old age versus neuro-degeneration and practice cognitive exercises. My individual interactions with the residents took a more different approach of discussing feelings about the shift to this facility for new residents and helping them through issues of loss, aging and dependence to rebuild positive feelings about the self.

I worked as an intern under a Family Court marriage counsellor for a semester where my job responsibilities included couples therapy for separated couples as well as those seeking legal separation at pre-litigation and litigation stages. I also worked with families over issues of child custody as well as family inheritance feuds. The court also had designated spaces for the other parent to meet his or her children when temporary custody was with one parent and the case was still being heard in court. As a counselor, I assisted the social work wing during such meetings and worked with children of separated couples. During my time at the Family Court I was also part of the core team to conceptualize and implement a model for a support group for reconciled couples - a first in the Family Court history. During the planning and facilitation of this support group I was able to learn from the clients and their experiences about strategies employed by counselors that they thought were instrumental in their reconciliation and sustained progress. While working with feuding family members or a dysfunctional couple system can be very challenging, I also learnt a lot from the experience and the systemic approach altered my counseling style. Creating a safe space for sharing and making all voices feel heard was my biggest takeaway from this internship. I also worked with women who had been abused and had faced domestic violence often at the hands of their spouse. I quickly learnt how legal systems have a huge impact in ensuring safety of such women and the ways in which it can also make women vulnerable to violence.