With immense sadness, we share the news of the sudden death of Miraj Desai, PhD, at the age of 41 on Sunday, November 5, 2023. Miraj was an assistant professor at the Program for Recovery and Community Health (PRCH) of the Yale University School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry. Miraj has been a dedicated member of the Yale community since 2011, when he started as a pre-doctoral clinical fellow. He then completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the West Haven VA before joining his home at PRCH. During his time at Yale, Miraj was a Resident Fellow of Pierson College, affiliated faculty in the Center on Climate Change and Health and the Yale School of Public Health, a member of the South Asian Studies Council, and the creator and director of the Structural Health and Psychology (SHP) lab.
At Yale, Miraj made ground-breaking contributions to the new field of "structural psychology" — a field examining the structural bases of health, equity, and inequity. He developed the concept of "implicit organizational bias" — the premise of his K01 award from the National Institute on Minority Health and Disparities (NIMHD).
His overall research on culture, community, race, and racism has been recognized and funded by a range of awards/grants, including a K01 Award from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities/NIH; a Pioneering Ideas Award from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; a KL2 Scholar Award from the Yale Center for Clinical Investigation/NIH (for research featuring African American communities); and a NIMH Supplement for Minority Health and Mental Health Disparities Research (for research featuring Asian and Latinx communities).
Miraj’s book, Travel and Movement in Clinical Psychology: The World Outside the Clinic (Palgrave), with foreword by Jeffrey Sachs, examines the relationship between mental health and various forms of structural oppression (e.g., racial, economic, and climate injustice).
His honors and recognitions include being named a 40 under 40 Leader in Health by the National Minority Quality Forum in 2022; a “Newsmaker,” by the American Public Health Association in 2021; and a nomination by Palgrave Macmillan for the Ralph Waldo Emerson Award in 2019.
He was also named to the Phi Beta Kappa Society for his book. The book also earned him a nomination for the William James Book Award, American Psychological Association, Division of General Psychology; a certificate of Outstanding Recognition from the Yale Office of Sustainability; and a finalist award in the Health: Psychology/Mental Health category of the 2018 Best Book Awards sponsored by American Book.
Miraj was also the 2018 Melba J.T. Vasquez Early Career Award recipient for Distinguished Contributions (American Psychological Association Minority Fellowship Program), the 2019 Distinguished Early Career Contributions in Qualitative Inquiry Award (APA Division of Quantitative and Qualitative Methods), and the 2008 Sidney Jourard Award (APA Society for Humanistic Psychology). He is also a Minority Fellow of the APA.
Moving outside the clinic, for several years, Miraj partnered with a historic African American church, Beulah Heights First Pentecostal Church, where he collaborated with Emeritus Pastor Bishop Theodore L. Brooks, Sr. and members to address recovery and structural racism from a community-centered perspective — funded by NIH KL2 and Templeton Foundation grants. Miraj's scholarship featured stakeholder engagement, co-designed empirical research, and the development of spiritually and culturally responsive interventions. He detailed the pathways through which chronic unemployment, mass incarceration, workplace discrimination, and racial profiling create an atmosphere in which well-being is compromised, which he termed "atmospheric racism" (Desai et al., 2023), which has featured rigorous co-designed empirical research and community-led dissemination strategies like filmmaking.
He conducted other participatory projects with Fountain House in New York. He developed a training curriculum on participatory research for clinical researchers and their community partners as part of a Eugene Washington Engagement Award from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI). Finally, Miraj was a dedicated member of the Mental Health and Climate Change group at Yale, as part of which he presented at the Reb Psych conference on “Climate Change Displacement and Mental Health,” exemplifying his commitment to ensuring that the world would be sustained for his son and generations to come.
Miraj grew up in Ohio before receiving his B.A. from Miami University in 2005. At Miami University he was a Benjamin Harrison Scholar, Phi Beta Kappa, and studied at Selwyn College, University of Cambridge. He graduated from Fordham University. (M.A., Ph.D.), where he completed his doctoral thesis on family care and social activism for autism spectrum disorders in India. His clinical training included placements at Columbia University and the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture. Miraj’s academic lineage includes having been mentored by Larry Davidson and Frederick Wertz in phenomenological methods, among many others.
Miraj is survived by his wife, Dr. Usha Reena Rungoo, and son, Indra, as well as his mother, Maya Desai, and his brother, Neil Desai, both living in Ohio.
Miraj will be remembered for his tenacity and intense passion to make the world better for all. For the Department of Psychiatry and the School of Medicine, he will forever be known for his dedication to mentoring and developing the next generation of scholars and, foremost, for advancing a department mission highlighting the importance of engaging communities and addressing structural racism.
On a more personal level, his family at PRCH will forever remember Miraj, not only for his commitment and fearless dedication to the causes that he cared so deeply about, but for the laughter and light he brought to our program and many PRCH gatherings over the years. He could bring the house down with his unbridled karaoke, inspire you to moonwalk beside him like the master, Michael J, and rock a full-sized furry, sloth costume like no other. But Miraj was never more radiant and proud than on those occasions when he graciously shared his beloved wife, Reena, and cherished son, Indra, with his friends and colleagues at PRCH.
Information on a departmental town hall and memorial services for Miraj Desai are pending.
This announcement was jointly prepared by John Krystal, MD; Chyrell Bellamy, PhD; and Maria O'Connell, PhD; with assistance from colleagues and Dr. Desai's wife, Reena.