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Miraj U. Desai, PhD

Assistant Professor of Psychiatry
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Assistant Professor of Psychiatry

Biography

In Memoriam: 1982- 2023

Miraj U. Desai, PhD was an Assistant Professor at the Program for Recovery and Community Health of the Yale University School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry. At Yale, he was also a Fellow of Pierson College, Affiliated Faculty in the Center on Climate Change and Health (Yale School of Public Health), and a Member of the South Asian Studies Council. He had been at Yale since 2011, completing his clinical and postdoctoral fellowships, prior to joining the faculty in 2015. His work focused on the cultural, community, and social justice foundations of mental health.

Dr. Desai lead the Structural Health and Psychology (SHP, or "ship") Lab. The SHP Lab investigates—through multiple methods and community engagement—the structural bases of health, equity, and inequity. This work also involves developing a novel basic and applied science—which his lab calls “structural psychology”—to aid in these efforts. Structural psychology spans the entire translational science spectrum, inclusive of basic, clinical, community, and population health research.

Dr. Desai's scientific work on culture, community, race, and racism has been funded by a range of awards, 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 in partnership with local African American faith communities); and a NIMH Supplement for Minority Health and Mental Health Disparities Research (for research featuring Asian and Latinx communities). Dr. Desai’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.

Dr. Desai was a recipient of the Melba J.T. Vasquez Early Career Award for Distinguished Contributions (American Psychological Association Minority Fellowship Program); the Distinguished Early Career Contributions in Qualitative Inquiry Award (APA Division of Quantitative and Qualitative Methods); and the Sidney Jourard Award (APA Society for Humanistic Psychology). He was a Minority Fellow of the APA and was named a 40 Under 40 Leader in Health by the National Minority Quality Forum. Dr. Desai was a practitioner of Zen and is proficient in Gujarati, French, and Hindi.

Appointments

Other Departments & Organizations

Education & Training

Postdoctoral Fellowship
Yale School of Medicine/West Haven VA (2014)
Predoctoral Fellowship
Yale School of Medicine (2012)
PhD
Fordham University (2012)
MA
Fordham University (2008)
BA
Miami University (2005)

Research

Overview

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.

Research at a Glance

Yale Co-Authors

Frequent collaborators of Miraj U. Desai's published research.

Publications

Featured Publications

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Academic Achievements & Community Involvement

  • honor

    Michael Dinoff Memorial Lecture

    Regional AwardUniversity of Alabama Department of Psychology
  • honor

    40 Under 40 Leaders in Minority Health

    National AwardNational Minority Quality Forum
  • honor

    Distinguished Early Career Contributions in Qualitative Inquiry Award

    National AwardAmerican Psychological Association, Division of Quantitative and Qualitative Methods
  • honor

    Certificate of Outstanding Recognition

    Yale University AwardYale Office of Sustainability
  • honor

    Melba J.T. Vasquez Early Career Award for Distinguished Contributions in Research

    National AwardAmerican Psychological Association, Minority Fellowship Program

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