Global Mental Health faculty work in research and practice on preventive, promotive, and treatment interventions with vulnerable populations in low- and middle-income countries across the globe. We conduct research in the areas of maternal mental health, childhood and adolescence through adulthood, and are working to integrate the consideration of mental health needs into other program areas including poverty reduction, nutrition, humanitarian, and maternal and child health services. To support this area of research, we have strong links with faculty in the Departments of International Health; Population, Family and Reproductive Health; Health, Behavior and Society; and Schools of Nursing and Medicine.
 Judith Bass, MPH, MIA, PhD
Associate Professor, Department of Mental Health (primary), and the Center for Humanitarian Health
Dr. Bass’s areas of expertise include designing and evaluating methods for assessing mental health across populations and investigating the effectiveness of innovative prevention and intervention strategies in collaboration with in-country service providers. She is interested in the inter-connectedness of mental health and economic development with the goal of understanding how interventions and programs addressing each of these domains can be integrated to better improve health and well-being. Dr. Bass has lead or co-lead multiple trials of task-sharing mental health interventions and is also involved in training and capacity building of global mental health researchers through academic training programs and field-based projects. Email: jbass1@jhu.edu |
 Paul Bolton, MB, BS, MPH, MSc
Senior Scientist, Department of International Health (primary), Department of Mental Health, and the Center for Humanitarian Health
Dr. Bolton has extensive experience in both research, and research capacity building in LMIC after working in Africa, Eastern Europe, North and South America, South-East Asia, the Middle East, and the Pacific Region. His career in mental health has consisted of collaborative field-based research with service providers and other researchers to inform programming, focusing on measurement of mental health needs and in defining and assessing outcomes in intervention design, development and implementation. He has developed field-based mixed methods to understand how mental health problems present and are described in various cultures, using this information to adapt, translate and test locally appropriate and accurate instruments for assessment of mental disorders and program impact. Dr. Bolton has done similar work in developing culturally appropriate measures of function and psychosocial problems for countries in the regions mentioned above. Email: pbolton1@jhu.edu |
 Emily Haroz, MA, MHS, PhD
Assistant Scientist, Department of Mental Health (primary), and the Center for American Indian Health
Dr. Haroz has a background is in quantitative methods, advanced statistical approaches and epidemiology related to the implementation and evaluation of mental and behavioral health programs. She has conducted numerous studies to understand mental and behavioral health problems and programs across a wide range of diverse populations including conflict and torture affected population. Emily has a joint appointment with the Center for American Indian Health and is faculty with the Center for Humanitarian Health. Her interests include dissemination and implementation science, suicide prevention, evidence-based mental health programs, and applying systems dynamic approaches to aid in implementing and sustaining these programs to maximize health benefits. Email: eharoz1@jhu.edu |
 Geetha Jayaram, MD, MBA
Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatry (primary), Department of Health Policy and Management, and the Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety
Dr. Jayaram is a trained clinician, clinical researcher and program builder who has managed many outpatient and inpatient programs as an administrator, director, teacher and innovator. Her global influence is as the founder and director of an international community psychiatry project with local leaders in the rural areas surrounding Bangalore, India called the Maanasi Project. This project is serving poor women and children with varying degrees of mental illness by providing medical care to patients from 206 villages and a population reach of 6 million households. Email: gjayara1@jhmi.edu |
 Jeremy Kane, MPH, PhD
Assistant Scientist, Department of Mental Health (primary), and the Center for Humanitarian Health
Dr. Kane is trained as a psychiatric epidemiologist, with specific research interests in global mental health, adolescent health, and substance and alcohol use. His research investigates the impacts of culture and migration on substance and alcohol use patterns and how these relationships are related to experienced trauma and co-occurring mental health problems. He works on these issues both globally among HIV and trauma-affected populations in LMIC, as well as domestically among refugee and immigrant populations living in the United States. Email: jkane29@jhu.edu |
 Catherine Lee, MPH, PhD
Assistant Scientist, Department of International Health (primary), and the Center for Humanitarian Health
Dr. Catherine Lee has extensive public health program implementation and research with over ten years of experience in Thailand and Myanmar. Her main interests are the application of qualitative research to the design and evaluation of interventions, as well as input from local communities on these processes. Email: clee147@jhu.edu |
 Laura Murray, PhD
Associate Scientist, Department of Mental Health (primary), Department of International Health, and the Center for Humanitarian Health
Dr. Murray is a clinical psychologist with extensive expertise in multiple evidence-based treatments for mental and behavioral problems, and has lead and collaborated on over 13 randomized clinical trials in LMIC. She developed a trans-diagnostic treatment for LMIC for use with lay providers that has completed trials as a potentially more scalable approach to disseminating evidence-based practices. She is also interested in training and supervision processes, and implementation science in LMIC. Email: lmurra15@jhu.edu |
 Sarah Murray, MSPH, PhD
Assistant Professor, Department of Mental Health (primary), and the Center for Humanitarian Health
Dr. Murray’s broad research interest is the development and evaluation of multi-level and multi-sectoral interventions that address mental health in low resource settings globally. Her dissertation research used mixed-methods to assess the relationship between caregivers’ symptoms of mental distress and the growth of HIV-affected children in Uganda. An additional current area of focus is the intersection of gender based violence, stigma and mental health with a goal of developing strategies for intervening at both the individual and community level. Email: smurray9@jhu.edu |
 Pamela Surkan, ScD
Associate Professor, Department of International Health (primary), Department of Health, Behavior and Society, and Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health
Dr. Surkan conducts research globally in the fields of maternal child health and social epidemiology, and is specifically interested in reducing mental health disparities for marginalized populations. Her research has focused on predictors and consequences of perinatal mental health disorders and on reducing the consequences for mothers and their children. Regarding prevention of post-partum depression, she led work showing the positive effects of a randomized controlled health promotion intervention on depression in a sample of multi-ethnic women. She also helped oversee a support-focused mental health intervention study in Haiti for youth affected by HIV/AIDS. Finally, with the goal of informing interventions, she has studied how differences in care received from informal networks versus from clinical staff are associated with subsequent guilt and depressive symptoms in mothers after the death of a child. Currently, in collaboration with global experts, she is studying exposure to trauma and its effects on mental health of pre-school aged children in Brazil, validating of a measure of prolonged grief among Nepali widows, and developing an anxiety intervention for pregnant women in Pakistan. Email: psurkan@jhu.edu |
 Wietse Tol, PhD
Associate Professor, Department of Mental Health (primary), and the Center for Humanitarian Health; Program Director Peter C. Alderman Foundation
Dr. Tol’s work is focused on the question of how best to support the wellbeing of people who face adversities such as violence and poverty. He is particularly interested in preventive approaches that integrate psychological components with interventions that address the social determinants of mental health. In addition to research, he is interested in how research and practice can be better connected. Email: wtol1@jhu.edu |
 Larry Wissow, MD, MPH
James P. Connaughton Professor of Community Psychiatry, School of Medicine (primary), and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Departments of Mental Health, Epidemiology, International Health, and Health, Behavior and Society
Dr. Wissow has served as a faculty member in the Division of General Pediatrics, as well as physician director of their child abuse team. He is “triple boarded” in pediatrics, adult, and child psychiatry, and has worked for over 10 years as both a child psychiatrist co-located in a “medical home” clinic providing primary care to adolescents with HIV. Dr. Wissow has also spent over 10 years as an attending psychiatrist in the Community Psychiatry Hispanic Clinic providing care to recent immigrants from Latin America and Francophone Africa. Dr. Wissow’s global research includes conducting trials of mental health communication skills training for primary care pediatricians, and testing models for integrating mental health into pediatric primary care in Ethiopia and Brazil. He is also co-PI of a current NIMH funded School Health Implementation Network: Eastern Mediterranean Region (SHINE), a study evaluating the integration of mental health services into school-based settings in the Pakistan with related capacity building being done in Egypt, Jordan and Iran. He is also PI of a hybrid implementation-effectiveness trial of pediatric collaborative mental health care in Iran (also funded by the NIMH) and one of four co-PIs of a Medical Education Partnership Initiative grant supporting early career faculty at Addis Ababa University. |
