Srishti Sardana
Graduate Student (Doctoral Scholar), Teachers College, Columbia University.
Srishti Sardana is a graduate student in the Department of Counseling and Clinical Psychology, in the Global Mental Health Lab, Teachers College, Columbia University. She is also a Research Assistant at the New York State Psychiatric Institute and Columbia University Medical Center. She has assisted on various projects with the aim to build skills needed to conduct high-impact mental health research in low-resource settings. She has worked with faculty and advanced graduate students on several studies including examining the feasibility and acceptability of evidence-based psychotherapy (specifically, interpersonal psychotherapy) to address the mental health needs of adolescent girls trafficked for sex work and prostitution in India; communities impacted by the Syrian refugee crisis in Lebanon; and implemented a pilot study to assess the mental health needs of home-based female sex workers in rural India for her Master’s thesis, at Teachers College. Srishti is currently examining how the precision medicine initiative may benefit a larger population by ensuring an equitable racial representation of individuals of different ethnic groups. Before enrolling at Columbia University, Sardana was employed in the juvenile offender unit at the Institute of Juvenile Justice, Delhi Police where she initiated a narrative therapy-based intervention project for youth offenders. She also helped a local mental health NGO with the Building Bonds project, which trained 100,000 men and boys to become active stakeholders in prevention of violence against women and girls in Delhi, India. Srishti is the co-founder of Sishu Vikas, an NGO, where she assisted in clinical work focused on providing therapeutic support for child and adult clients in need for crisis and suicide assessment and intervention for individuals exposed to violence, neglect, and sexual abuse. As a doctoral student, Srishti’s research is focused on bridging the gap in clinical science research and practice, with a specific focus on socially disadvantaged communities with severe mental illnesses.
Working Group Affiliation