Nita Senesathith

Nita Senesathith (she/her) was a summer intern with the Global Mental Health Programs in 2020 and returned to serve as a Management Intern in 2022. Currently, she works as a Research Assistant at the Trauma and Community Resilience Center at Boston Children’s Hospital. As part of her summer work with the Center in 2020, she worked with Dr. Sabrina Hermosilla to help Roots of Health, a reproductive health organization in the Philippines, find mental health trainings/interventions for their staff to provide to LGBTQ youth. She did both academic and grey literature searches for trainings that have been done around the globe to see which ones could potentially be implemented in the Philippines. In the end, she drafted a summary page for each of the top three trainings she found. Roots of Health will then draft grant proposals and find potential donors to help implement the trainings. Nita was able to learn about different global mental health careers through the weekly Brown Bag Lunch and Professional Development seminars. She was also grateful for her chance as an intern to take part in the CUGMHP Instagram Takeover Day to tell people more about mental health in Laos, her home country. Through her time with the Center, Nita learned so much about global mental health, developed her interests, and met amazing professionals in the field. Nita hopes to pursue an MPH in the near future and ultimately a PhD in Global Mental Health to develop community-based mental health interventions in Laos.