Kate Scotchie (she/her) is a rising senior at Hunter College in New York, majoring in Psychology and minoring in Women and Gender Studies. Her interests in transnational psychology and the promotion of evidence-based models and trauma-informed research drew her to the Columbia GMHP. This summer, she worked under the mentorship of Dr. Jennifer Mootz on several projects. She assisted with an ongoing research study intended to address the mental health needs of urban internally displaced people (IDPs) in Nampula City, Mozambique. Through understanding the local contextual factors, this project hopes to help develop an implementation strategy aimed at facilitating community-informed, digitized mental health detection and care for IDPs. She aided by writing a review of the existing literature on discrimination from healthcare providers towards IDPs in Sub-Saharan Africa and systemic responses and policy measures related to mental health treatment for IDPs.
Kate also contributed to a publication by Dr.Mootz and Dr. Myrna Weissman focusing on Interpersonal Psychotherapy in different countries, settings, and cultures by compiling the case examples of IPT and the main adaptations applied in each example. She was also involved with other activities, such as conducting informational interviews with past Columbia GMH Scholars and Council Grant Recipients, searching for grant opportunities for conducting research on gender-based violence in Mozambique and co-leading a journal club discussion. Overall, Kate is thankful for the experience this internship provided and looks forward to contributing to more work surrounding the global mental health and implementation science field moving forward.