Dr. Shabab Wahid is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Global Health, School of Health. A global mental health specialist, he is engaged in psychiatric and behavioral research primarily in low- and middle-income countries within three areas of focus: (1) the connection between climate change and mental health; (2) the influence of culture on the lived experience of mental illness; and (3) development, cultural adaptation, and evaluation of community-based interventions targeting mental illness and reducing mental health stigma and discrimination. Dr. Wahid’s recent work examining the association between climate-related stressors and adverse mental health outcomes in Bangladesh was published in The Lancet Planetary Health , and was featured in TIME Magazine and BBC World Service Radio . In a follow-up project, he is investigating mediating mechanisms connecting climate stressors and adverse mental health oucomes via the Assessing the risk of Climate Change on popuLatIon Mental and physicAl healTh outcomEs – ACCLIMATE – study in Bangladesh. He is also engaged in a cultural adaptation and feasibility study of a mental health intervention called Self-Help Plus via the REducing STress via sOcial pRotEction – RESTORE – research project in Senegal; and reducing mental illness stigma and discrimination through the INDIGO Partnership project in China, Ethiopia, India, Nepal and Tunisia. He previously led research efforts in Bangladesh, Brazil, Nepal, Nigeria, and the UK examining the culturally salient explanatory models and idioms of distress connected to depression in adolescence and young adulthood.
Dr. Wahid serves on the Advisory Board of the Global Mental Health & Well-Being Initiative at Georgetown University, an interdisciplinary coalition of faculty, staff and students at Georgetown University to conduct research, develop pedagogy, and engage in informed activism and advocacy to improve mental well-being and psychosocial outcomes locally, nationally, and globally.
Dr. Wahid’s work has been published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry ; Health Policy and Planning ; The Lancet ; Journal of Affective Disorders ; Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry ; among other leading scientific journals. He received his Doctor of Public Health and Master of Public Health degrees from the Milken Institute School of Public Health, at George Washington University, Washington DC.
Academic Appointment(s)
- Primary
- Assistant Professor, SOH - Global Health Academic Department