Idil Kina

Hello everyone! This is Idil. I was born in Istanbul, Turkey and went to medical school in Ege University in Izmir, Turkey. Growing up in the political climate I did gave me the chance to cultivate a sense of social justice and political/structural awareness at an early age. In 7th grade I wrote blogs about sociopolitical factors leading to displacement within my country, started forums with kids across the globe, and dreamt of becoming a "doctor without border" in UNICEF (excuse the corporate identity crisis, I was 12) . This dream I had, and my passion for human rights brought me to medical school, that I expected to be a place where I could work with people and learn from them to create a fairer world. This vision quickly evolved into a reality after I started working for a student-lead organization called IFMSA. I went around the world and served medical students as they shaped the future of healthcare through human rights advocacy, policy making and capacity building - locally, nationally, and globally. Here I also discovered my passion for mental health. Not only every human rights issue we sought to overcome had a mental health component to it, but mental health was also critical for us, healthcare workers, to sustainably drive change. Afterwards, with my new passion and curiosity, I turned to psychiatry. I joined World Psychiatry Association work groups for students and took part in organizing global mental health seminars, conducted research on human rights in psychiatry education as a part of World Network of Psychiatric Trainees and also had the chance to briefly work as a psychiatry resident in Turkey before moving to New Haven and starting my residency at Yale. So here I am, a place where I can work with and learn from people, people who inspire me to create a fairer world. When I'm not busy providing for and learning from my patients and admiring my co-residents, you can catch me taking random walks around the town, discovering the Yale Campus, and hopping libraries, religiously following the Yale Arts Calendar, and scavenging books from secondhand shops (I also crochet).