CURRENT FELLOWS
ABHIJIT NADKARNI
Abhijit is a Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Fellow at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, UK and is currently based in Sangath. He qualified as a psychiatrist, first in Goa and then in the prestigious South London and Maudsley training scheme in the UK.
After completing his MRCPsych he also obtained higher training as a General Adult and Addictions psychiatrist in the same training scheme. He also has a Masters in Mental Health Services Research from the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College, London. His research interests include global mental health with a particular interest in alcohol use disorders.
He is currently leading a project called SAAHAS II exploring the long term outcomes in alcohol use disorders in Goan men. He is also simultaneously pursuing his PhD at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
JOTHEESWARAN THIYAGARAJAN
Jotheeswaran is pursuing his PhD at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's college, London, UK and is currently based in Sangath. He also holds post graduate qualifications in psychiatric research from the University of London.
His research interest lies in ageing and chronic diseases. His proposed work through the COPE project involves developing packages of care that address relevant impairments (mobility, behaviour, mood, nutrition, hydration, continence) horizontally across underlying health conditions (dementia, stroke, heart disease, Parkinson's disease, arthritis).
He will also investigate the feasibility of community-based intervention constructed for frail dependent older people.
NADJA VAN GINNEKAN
Nadja is a Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Fellow at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She trained as a general practitioner (family physician) in the UK and has a Masters in Public Health.
She has experience in the field of community health research and evaluation in Senegal, South Africa and India.
She is leading the DELIVER project at Sangath to explore the roles of non-mental health specialists in mental health care delivery in India as part of her PhD.
SUNITA SINGH
Sunita has done her masters in Population and Reproductive Health Research from Mahidol University, Bangkok. In the past, she has worked with several non-governmental organisations on issues of reproductive and maternal health.
She was one of the coordinators of a community monitoring project across nine states of India funded by Government of India. She is currently a Research Fellow under the PRIME project. Her PhD is linked with London School of Hygiene and Tropic Medicine on Maternal Mental Health.
PAST FELLOWS
DR LISA ARONSON
Dr Lisa Aronson was a Fulbright-Nehru lecturer affiliated with Sangath from August to February 2010. At Sangath, she worked with the school programme SHAPE; the "mothers" at the orphanage Konseisanv Balgram, in Verna, Goa; as well as an intervention for a future Sangath project addressing the psychological needs of children with emotional disorders belonging to socially disadvantaged rural families.
She has worked as a clinical child psychologist and social worker. Lisa directed the Child Evaluation Division of the Trauma Psychiatry Service at the University of California and the Center for the Study of Mind and Human Interaction at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. She also served on the faculties of the Department of Psychiatric Medicine at University of Virginia School of Medicine, and the Graduate Center for Child Development and Psychotherapy.
She has worked with mental health professionals and paraprofessionals regarding trauma and bereavement following disasters.
MIRAJ U DESAI
Miraj was a PhD candidate in Clinical Psychology at Fordham University (New York, USA) and a Fellow of the American Psychological Association Minority Fellowship Program.
He worked with Sangath on the ARTI project, specifically helping to design and implement the qualitative research component. After spending four months in Goa, he returned to work with ARTI and collected data for his own PhD thesis focused on parents' experiences of children with special needs.
Miraj found his time at Sangath to be an “exciting, challenging, and life-changing experience.”
MIRJA KOSCHORKE
Mirja is a Psychiatrist and Wellcome Trust Clinical PhD Fellow of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, UK. She completed her core psychiatric training in Oxford, UK, in 2008 (MRCPsych) and holds further postgraduate qualifications in Public Health and Development Management.
Her research interests lie in global mental health and the stigma and discrimination associated with mental illness.
She was a member of the Sangath Institutional Review Board and the coordinator of the qualitative component of the COPSI trial.
PAST VOLUNTEERS
Aran Keable
Aran studied chemistry at the University of Oxford. He found out about Sangath through Dr Vikram Patel, a family friend and thought that volunteering for a month would allow him to combine some traveling (a favourite hobby) with doing something productive during his summer holidays.
LUISA STRIK-LIEVERS
Luisa Strik-Lievers is a child psychiatrist and neurologist, working in Milan, Italy. Her clinical interests lie in migration issues, mother-child interaction and developmental disorders. She studied the genetics of autism for her PhD and is a researcher in this area at the University of Milan.
She came to Sangath for a month to collaborate on the ARTI project and to learn a little bit about the way child psychiatry is approached in India.
|
SAMUEL WALDRON JOANNA BARRET |
Joanna and Samuel |
SABRINA SCHMELZLE
Sabrina is a psychiatrist from Germany and was associated with Sangath as a volunteer. Having worked for 10 years as a clinician in Germany, she was immensely influenced by Dr Vikram Patel’s lecture and decided to become a student.
Pursuing her Masters in International health at the Charité in Berlin, she volunteered with Sangath as part of her sudies. She helped prepare manuals for training community health workers and health counsellors for the Vidharba project.
Sabrina’s main passion lies in improving the quality of life for people with mental disorders, especially the most marginalised ones and in preventing suicide. She loves travelling, meeting people from different cultures and their music, which actually makes her enjoy the cramped bus trips to the office.
PAST INTERNS
AMANDA GRAVERSEN
Amanda visited us from Denmark for six months. She studied Education Theory and Practice at an international institute for social educators.
At Sangath, Amanda participated in her second internship; she worked for the ARTI project. Amanda previously worked with adolescents who have different mental and physical disorders including autism for more than a year.
She enjoyed the experience, where she met people of diverse backgrounds and learned from them.
ANA EDUARDA RIBEIRO
Ana was a fourth-year psychiatry resident working at Magalhães Lemos Psychiatric Hospital in Porto, Portugal. Throughout her training, Ana focused her clinical interests in public mental health interventions and psychiatric epidemiology.
She came to Sangath for three months, along with her collegue and friend Mónica, to collaborate primarily with the COPSI trial and improve her knowledge in community interventions.
Both Ana and Mónica value and believe in the ability to make accountable medical interventions with limited resources.
ANUSHKA PATEL
Anushka is originally from Mumbai but studied psychology at Carleton College in Minnesota, USA. She worked with several NGOs in the past but insisted that Sangath was one of the best, since it combined her twin passions of research in mental health with social service.
At Sangath, Anushka spent six weeks editing training manuals and materials for the website, participating in a workshop on psychoeducation and coding qualitative interviews.
Besides her experience at Sangath, Anushka has enjoyed exploring Goa’s lush beauty in the monsoon.
.jpg)
AURORA KAZI BASSETT
Aurora was a junior at Stanford University, where she was an Urban Studies major. She was interested in urban health, particularly mental health, in the developing world, which is why she chose to work at Sangath.
She interned at for eight weeks under the Urban Fellows programme, working on various projects including qualitative research coding, editing of manuals and participating in the Inter-personal Therapy workshop.
Aurora plans to work on her senior thesis while she still has the support and expertise of Sangath’s staff. She says, “Living and working in Goa in the monsoon has been beautiful and educational and I hope I'll be back sometime soon.”
Anusha was a rising senior at Yale University where she majored in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology with a concentration is Neurobiology.
During her years of study, she has cultivated an interest in connecting medical anthropology and global health. She aims to understand how to apply medical anthropology research in medical facilities and in public health interventions. After graduating, she hopes to pursue a MD/PhD in Anthropology with dreams of becoming a phsyician-anthropologist professor.
As a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow, Anusha conducted independent medical anthropology research with Sangath on the DELIVER project. She looked at the attitudes and roles of non-specialist health workers in providing mental health care and loving the experience.
CHELSIE HOLLAS
Chelsie was a student at Texas A&M Health Science Center School of Rural Public Health where she studied Master's in Public Health degree in Epidemiology.
She interned with the COPSI team and visited Sangath for two months. Her background is in psychology and medical science and she hoped to pursue a medical degree after finishing her MPH.
As a public health student, Chelsie said she gained experience and knowledge in community-based interventions for mental illnesses and improve her skills in research.
DIVYA KUMAR
A mental health professional with seven years experience in various clinical, community and rehabilitative settings in Delhi, Divya was a student of MSc Public Health in Developing Countries at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
She has joined Sangath as an intern with PREMIUM for her summer project. Never giving up her hope to one day see a Utopian world, Divya was passionate about mental health issues and was always making efforts towards improving quality of mental health services in developing countries or just anywhere in the world. Divya loved reading, writing, driving, photography and sketching.
Eva came to Sangath for one and half months to collaborate primarily with the Dementia Project and improve her knowledge in community interventions with limited resources.
EKATA PHAL DESAI
Ekata was a management graduate from Xavier’s Institute of Management and Entrepreneurship, Bangalore; specialising in Human Resource Management.
She interned at Sangath for three weeks and assisted in conducting research for the COPE project. She believed that the internship helped her gain an insight and experience about how an NGO operates and also the condition of the elderly suffering from chronic diseases.
HANNAH MOGUL-ADLINHannah was studying her second year at Yale University, and internined for two months at Sangath. She was majoring in Anthropology and planned to go on to study public health.
She was introduced to Sangath through reading papers by Dr Vikram Patel in her medical anthropology class, and was very excited to be working on the SHAPE project. She gained hands-on experience with community-based health interventions that she hoped to apply to her future work.
JOANN FERNANDES
Joann was a MBA student of Goa University specialising in Human Resource Management when she began her internship at Sangath as a part of an Independent Study Course on ‘Management of Not for Profit Organizations’.
It was Sangath’s commitment to child and adolescent development that first attracted her to the organisation. She believes that this internship will help her gain enriching insights and experience about the realities of running of a non-profit organisation.
Her guiding principle in life is, ‘When actions speak, words become inaudible’.
MELISSA CRANFORD
Melissa was a medical student at Brown University. She is interested in mental health care issues among African American women and the design of programmes that make mental health services more accessible to them.
She spent four weeks of her summer at Sangath working on the MANAS project to gain a better understanding of integrating mental health services into the primary health care level.
The knowledge and experience gained went towards informing her project with African-American women in her college town- Providence, Rhode Island.
MONICA SANTOS
Mónica was a medical doctor on her fourth-year of psychiatry training at Magalhães Lemos Psychiatric Hospital in Porto, Portugal. After a travel through India, encouraged by her Goan ancestors, Mónica joined Sangath for a period of three months to participate primarily in the COPSI trial, in order to improve her knowledge about community mental health interventions.
NEIL KRISHNA AGGARWAL
Neil was a resident psychiatrist at Yale University. After medical school, he completed his graduate coursework in the religion and anthropology of South Asia. He is interested in cultural psychiatry, psychiatric anthropology,and global mental health.
REBECCA HOCK
Rebecca was a PhD student at the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in the United States. She studied in the department of mental health with a focus on psychiatric epidemiology.
She was at Sangath for 10 weeks and worked primarily with the MANAS team on both quantitative and qualitative data analysis. Rebecca greatly enjoyed her experience at Sangath and thought the best part was working with the Sangath staff as well as with other interns.
In her own words, “It is great to meet people who come from different backgrounds but have common interests.”
NEHA JOSHI She spent this time editing psychology manuals, helping with marketing and working on the website. She planned to specialise in journalism and thoroughly enjoyed her internship at Sangath.
ALOK SHARMA
Alok was a student of MBA from Goa Institute of Management. He earlier earned a BE from Lingayas Institute of Management and Technology, Faridabad and had worked as Marketing Engineer with ABB Ltd for four years.
He helped out with marketing and fundraising for Sangath during his internship.
ANKUR MISHRA
Ankur was pursuing a PGDM programme at Goa Institute of Management. Electronics & Communication.
He studied to be an engineer from Jaypee University of Information Technology, Solan, and had worked in different KPO’s in different areas. At Sangath, he worked on administration and induction policies.
ASHWIN S GADGIL
Having completed his graduation in mechanical engineering from Government Engineering College, Ujjain, Ashwin began pursing a PGDM programme at Goa Institute of Management.
He worked in the aeronautical industry for four years and worked on the human resources and recruitment policies of Sangath.
GAYATRI IYER
Gayatri studied PGDM from Goa Institute of Management and had done her bachelors in Journalism and Communication Studies from Manipal University.
She interned with Sangath as a part of her course's corporate social responsibility project. Working for the marketing department, her work primarily focused on building a wider network base for Sangath and organising a fund-raising event.
She believed that working for Sangath would give her an insight into the working of an NGO and share its objective of serving the society.
HARSH JAIN
Harsh was a management student at Goa institute of management, on a six-month internship with Sangath. He looked into aspects of managing and improving the file handling system of Sangath along with implementation of MIS reports.
He previously worked with Aarushi NGO and was responsible for recording books through JAWS software for blind children. He has professional experience of 30 months in the IT sector.
VEDANT DANI
Vendant studied MBA from Goa Institute of Management. He has a BE from University of Technology, Bhopal and had worked as Planning Engineer with L & T for three years.
At Sangath, he worked on the file management and MIS.
