My name is Parijat Deshpande and I am the Founder and Executive Director of MySahana. The idea of starting MySahana was one that was slowly forming in my head over the years and I’m so excited to see it turn into a reality and share it with you!
My interest in psychology began when I was studying at UC Berkeley and I realized that I loved learning about people and why we do the things we do. I pursued this interest in graduate school at San Francisco State University where I studied for my MS in Clinical Psychology. There, I developed a strong liking for cross-cultural psychology and therapy and knew I had to incorporate the two into my future practice.
Specifically, I was interested in working with the South Asian population and during my pre- and post-masters internships I had the honor of working with several South Asian clients. However, I quickly realized that the theories and practices I had learned during my studies did not easily apply to the South Asian culture and values. I took this as a challenge upon myself to take theories that I had learned in my courses and make them culturally-sensitive but was frustrated that this hadn’t been incorporated into our studies already.
Through my internships during and after graduate school, I also realized that not only was there little information about South Asians in the clinical psychology world, but there was an abundance of misinformation about emotional health within the South Asian community.
I believed there was an amazing opportunity to connect the two worlds and my background of being South Asian as well as a trained Marriage and Family Therapist intern made me a strong candidate to make that connection.
Thus, MySahana was born.
My goals with MySahana are to build awareness, to answer questions and to address the stigma that surrounds the field of emotional health. Through MySahana, I want to challenge the South Asian community to look at emotional health in a very different light than the community ever has before. I also want to provide as much information as I can to encourage and inspire those in our community to take charge of their health and proactively find resources to live a more fulfilling, healthier life.
I hope to use my personal knowledge of the South Asian culture, my educational background in clinical psychology, my experience teaching psychology courses at UC Berkeley and my passion for community service to make MySahana the liaison between the South Asian community and the psychology world. I hope you’ll join me as MySahana embarks on this brand new venture!
Aside from MySahana, I am available for speaking engagements for groups, organizations and companies. In addition, I lead healthy living classes as well as do private consultations. Please email or call me for more information on scheduling, availability and fees. For more information on my workshops and seminars, please click on the pdf below.
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