Miraj U. Desai, PhD

Dr. Desai’s research focuses on the cultural, community, and social justice foundations of mental health. This work spans multiple inter-related domains. The first domain involves examination of institutional bias, racism, and inequity, particularly the hidden, bureaucratic, and group psychological ways in which they proliferate. This research culminated most recently in the development of a novel concept of “implicit organizational bias,” published in the American Psychologist. Dr. Desai has received two major grants to extend this work: a K01 Award from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities/NIH and a Pioneering Ideas Award from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

A second domain of Dr. Desai’s work involves the development and conduct of community-based and community-engaged research. One  project—funded by a Yale Center for Clinical Investigation Junior Scholar Award (NIH KL2) and grants from the Spirituality Mind Body Institute at Columbia University/Templeton Foundation—has featured participatory research on depression, culture, and structural racism with local African American faith communities. Past projects also include participatory research training initiatives conducted in collaboration with persons in mental health recovery.

A third domain of Dr. Desai’s work involves the development and articulation of anti-oppression methodologies, disciplinary frameworks, and philosophies of science. Central to this work has been the book Travel and Movement in Clinical Psychology: The World Outside the Clinic—which examines the relation between mental health and structural problems like racism, climate change, and poverty—and the co-edited collection Fanon, Phenomenology, and Psychology (with Leswin Laubscher and Derek Hook).

A final domain has involved a series of empirical studies focused on examining the cultural, social, ecological, and racial dimensions of a wide range of mental health challenges, including depression, trauma/PTSD, and autism spectrum disorder. This work has often featured qualitative, phenomenological methods, with an emphasis on understanding lived experience within structural context.