Commencement Spotlight: Himadhari Sharma

So actually my interest in psychology started in high school. I took a I took an advanced placement, like intro to psychology course, and it was really appealing to me. I felt like it was very it made a lot of sense into things I was seeing within my own community as a South Asian American, as an Indian American.

When I actually was applying to different PhD programs, during my master's, I bought this book. There's a book in clinical and counseling psychology where they have all the programs in the country.  I was going through them trying to get in-depth information about what programs align to my research interests and passions to have the foundation that I'm looking for.

And UCSB was definitely one of them. Their scientist practitioner model, meaning that they do put a lot of emphasis in both the practice part of applied psychology as well as in the research and scholarly part of applied psychology.  This was a really great offer in my field of focus within psychology and has been around to access and utilization of mental health services by minoritized populations. UCSB is literally the birthplace of multicultural psychology.

 I really love the fact that I'm here. And as I'm now off on my clinical internship, I'm seeing the value pressure of just how strong a foundation our program provides.

Part of the applied psychology degree to get your doctorate as a counseling clinical psychologist, you have to finish a purely clinical year. And it's a very competitive process. You, it's very similar to like in medical school when you have the match for internship.

 I feel like my training at UCSB has really equipped me to be a good clinician. As someone who's open to learning things and expanding my skill set, as a clinician, in such a diverse and new environment. So I think overall, I feel really fortunate that I've had the foundation that I was able to develop, in our program, in the counseling, clinical and school psychology program here at, UCSB.
 

It's definitely been it's been a great experience. I've had a lot of opportunity to pursue research that I am truly passionate about. My advisor, he did not have any experience of working within the South Asian American community. So that was something I definitely brought in. Such as skills around qualitative research, which is the type of research that I conduct and a lot of skills and experience and working specifically with the centralization of services among minoritized communities.

He definitely brought me on projects to help me, learn the ropes as I was developing my own research. At the same time, he was really supportive of me taking on projects that were aligned to my own passions, to my own communities, in ways that I can serve my community.

I have learned so much from my colleagues and the diverse experiences they bring, and the skill sets they bring, and the ways which we challenge each other, ask questions, and bring up topics that we feel are important. When I think about the strength of our program, I often think about our students. And that's what I usually talk about.

 I think that's like kind of the highlight I definitely want to put I think when it comes to specifically collaboration, that's something that I think I have had such a privilege of being able to develop this collaborative relationships across different labs, across different combined programs.

In my journey in research,  I hadn't seen a lot of representation in research within the fields that had voice within my community. As a member of the South Asian community, I didn't know those needs existed because anecdotally, I had I had interacted with those needs and those gaps all the time of that.

My dissertation is titled Understanding the Cultural and Professional Identity Development of Bilingual English, Hindi, Urdu, South Asian American Mental Health clinicians, and that that describes me actually pretty well.

I plan to also help community members and being able to provide access of qualified bilingual service providers who are culturally grounded and who are rooted in culture. 

Immediately after I graduate, I'm going to be continuing at the University of California Berkeley, as a postdoctoral fellow in their Counseling and Psychological services program. That will help me work towards what I need to get licensed to be a licensed psychologist. 

Long term wise, I am also interested in pursuing positions or opportunities that are going to allow me to influence or partake in creating policy and systemic level changes around mental health, accessibility, and utility for minoritized communities and historically underrepresented communities.