Sawyer Strasberg is an honors student at Brown University studying Psychology and Mental Health with an additional concentration in Deaf Culture. His devotion to psychology began when he became a suicide and crisis hotline technician early in high school, rapidly forging empathetic connections with total strangers. The hotline offered him a myriad of distinct perspectives and worldviews, and also gave a first glimpse of the ubiquitous feelings of alienation, misunderstanding, and isolation that drive his academic and professional pursuits. By integrating these experiences with his own life experience working with Deaf and hearing children, Sawyer seeks to confront these feelings of separation by expanding access, destigmatizing, and actively contributing to mental health care.
This summer, Sawyer worked with Dr. Charles Lea researching, developing, and launching a novel framework for structural legal cynicism, which is a metric of one’s trust in their institutions. The now published manuscript reframes legal cynicism as an adaptive behavior, protecting against anxiety and depression in minoritized youth. Sawyer’s responsibilities for the project included organizing literature reviews, drafting evidence-based manuscript sections, and working with the Future of Families & Child Wellbeing Study dataset on quantitative cross-sectional analysis.
Sawyer had a fun and fulfilling time this summer, and is grateful to the Columbia leadership team for crafting such a thorough introduction into the professional world. He is well-equipped and eager to continue developing his clinical and research skills, providing insightful and thoughtful care to those around him.