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Sarah Lowe, PhD, on a Public Health Approach to Mental Health

Sarah Lowe, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Yale School of Public Health. Her research focuses on the long-term mental health consequences of a range of potentially traumatic events, from hurricanes to pandemics. 

While doing her clinical training with trauma survivors at a community health care center in Boston, Lowe's patients were dealing with more immediate life stressors, like not having a place to live. 

"That showed me that you can't understand mental health without paying attention to the context and the social and economic stressors that trauma survivors face," she says. Lowe explains that within public health "we're able to look at those things simultaneously. So both the symptoms and treating symptoms but also thinking about systems and policies that both put people at risk for trauma, but then make their traumatic experiences even more negatively impactful." 

As a disaster mental health researcher, Lowe immediately knew the COVID-19 pandemic was going to be a mental health crisis. She's collaborated with students and other faculty on work related to the pandemic and mental health, particularly the mental health burden of health care workers on the frontlines. 

"I can say in this pandemic, Yale was able to provide support to me and to my colleagues to do really cutting-edge research. Just observing my colleagues  on the forefront of the response to the pandemic doing things like modeling transmission, understanding the genetics of the virus, that's been really really inspiring to see."

Mental Health

Nearly 1 in 4 people will experience a mental illness in their lifetimes. The sheer burden of mental illness on the global population demands effective and efficient public health approaches to assessment and intervention. Faculty, researchers, and students in the Social and Behavioral Sciences apply innovative, community-based methods to the prevention and treatment of mental illness across the life course. Using longitudinal and experimental methods, we seek to understand the interplay of mental health with substance use (Lowe, White), aging (Levy), physical health conditions (Lowe), and the factors shaping psychological resilience after exposure to traumatic and stressful life events (Lowe, Tebes). We use psychophysiological approaches to examine the mental and physical health consequences of caregiving (Monin). Our interventions take advantage of emerging technologies (Hagaman, Kershaw, Pachankis). We work with community-based organizations to uncover the influence of maternal depression on birth outcomes and parenting (Hagaman), improve detection and prevention interventions to reduce suicidality (Hagaman), to explore transgenerational impact of mental distress including the impacts on children and families in Pakistan and Nepal (Hagaman) and to implement community interventions for preventing substance use among adolescents and promoting resilience among trauma survivors (Tebes).

Faculty of Interest

  • Assistant Professor of Public Health (Social & Behavioral Sciences); Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health

    Research Interests
    • Depression
    • Health Services
    • Suicide
    • Global Health
    • Qualitative Research
    • Biostatistics
    • Maternal Health
    • Maternal-Child Health Services
    • Public Health Systems Research
  • Department Chair and Susan Dwight Bliss Professor of Public Health (Social and Behavioral Sciences); Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health

    Research Interests
    • Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome
    • Epidemiology
    • HIV
    • India
    • Public Health
    • Sexually Transmitted Diseases
    • Global Health
    • Maternal-Fetal Relations
    • Risk Reduction Behavior
  • Professor of Public Health (Social and Behavioral Sciences) and Psychology; Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health

    Research Interests
    • Aging
    • Environment and Public Health
    • Mental Health
    • Psychological Phenomena
    • Social Change
    • Social Justice
    • Social Sciences
    • Psychiatry and Psychology
    • Health Equity
  • Associate Professor of Public Health (Social and Behavioral Sciences), Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Associate Clinical Professor of Nursing; Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health

    Research Interests
    • Anxiety Disorders
    • Mental Disorders
    • Disasters
    • Genetics, Behavioral
    • Mental Health Services
    • Psychological Phenomena
    • Psychology, Clinical
    • Rwanda
    • Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic
    • Mood Disorders
    • Substance-Related Disorders
    • Stress Disorders, Traumatic, Acute
    • Resilience, Psychological
    • Disaster Victims
    • Psychiatry and Psychology
    • Psychological Trauma
    • Trauma and Stressor Related Disorders
    • Exposure to Violence
    • Gender-Based Violence
  • Associate Professor of Public Health (Social & Behavioral Sciences)

    Research Interests
    • Diseases
    • Psychiatry and Psychology
    • Phenomena and Processes
  • Associate Professor of Public Health (Social and Behavioral Sciences); Director, The SASH Lab, Yale School of Public Health; Co-Director of Yale AIDS Prevention Training Program (T32), Yale School of Public Health; Associate Director, Justice, Community Capacity, Equity (JuCCE) Core, Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS, Yale University

  • David R. Kessler, M.D. '55 Professor of Public Health (Social and Behavioral Sciences), Professor of Psychology and Professor of Psychiatry; Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health

    Research Interests
    • Anxiety
    • Behavioral Sciences
    • Depression
    • Mental Health
    • Social Behavior
    • Social Change
    • Social Conditions
    • Social Sciences
    • Behavioral Research
    • Social Stigma
    • Sexual and Gender Minorities
  • Professor of Psychiatry (Psychology), in the Child Study Center and of Public Health (Social and Behavioral Sciences); Director, Division of Prevention and Community Research, Department of Psychiatry; Chief Psychologist, Connecticut Mental Health Center; Program Director, NIDA T32 Postdoctoral Research Training Program in Substance Abuse Prevention; Director, Elm City COMPASS, Psychiatry

    Research Interests
    • Primary Prevention
    • Public Health
    • Social Change
    • Social Justice
    • Program Evaluation
    • Cultural Diversity
    • Vulnerable Populations
    • Resilience, Psychological
    • Community-Based Participatory Research
  • Professor of Public Health (Social and Behavioral Sciences); Director of Online Education, Social and Behavioral Sciences; Professor, Social and Behavioral Sciences; Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health; Professor, Psychiatry

    Research Interests
    • Feeding and Eating Disorders
    • Obesity
    • Psychometrics
    • Tobacco Use Disorder