Sasha Mochida

Sasha Mochida is a rising senior at Macalester College double majoring in Neuroscience and Biology with a concentration in Community and Global Heath and a minor in Psychology. Coming from a myriad of cultures and being an immigrant, Sasha initially became interested in global mental health after witnessing various cultural understandings of mental and physical health from her parents and how it conflicted with American medical norms. She is specifically interested in understanding mental health from a socioeconomic perspective and using cultural contexts to provide treatment, create initiatives to mitigate stigma and promote access to mental health services.

While at the Global Mental Health Programs, Sasha worked with Dr. Sabrina Hermosilla on two projects. The first was a systematic review on how a mental health provider’s attitudes, knowledge, and behaviors can impact prescribing outcomes. For this project, Sasha was highly involved in collecting background information on psychotropic medication, developing the study protocol, organizational tasks, collecting the relevant literature, and helping refine the search term list. Furthermore, she worked extensively on the title, abstract, and full text screening for the relevant literature. The second project Sasha worked on was a systematic review evaluating the factor structures of PTSD and whether a universal PTSD factor structure could be identified. For this project, Sasha was involved with cleaning and updating the PROSPERO protocol, collecting relevant literature, and worked on the title, abstract, and full text screening for the relevant literature.