My name is Maleeha Abbas. I grew up in Pakistan and moved to the UK when I was 17. I graduated with a First Class Honours in Developmental Psychology and Clinical Neuroscience, from Royal Holloway. My final year research project was focused on resting-state functional connectivity of the Broca’s and Wernicke’s area with other brain areas in humans. During my undergrad, I completed three internships; at a dementia clinic in London, Baylor College of Medicine in the United States, and a research assistantship where I published an abstract at the British Geriatric conference. All this made me super interested in the way the brain works; specifically, I was interested in neurodevelopmental disorders such as Alzheimer’s Disease, Parkinson’s and Dementia. Hence, in my final year, I decided to pursue my Doctorate in Clinical Psychology as I wanted to specialise as a Neuropsychologist. A neuropsychologist is really just a clinical psychologist with extra training in the human nervous system. If you’re going to be a neuropsychologist, you will learn to be a therapist along the way.
This was when people started telling me that I should have just done medicine, and I am wasting my life doing such a long doctorate (5 years). However, medicine was never my top career choice that is why I didn’t do it for my undergrad. My questions to them were, how many doctors know about mental health? How many doctors are willing to TALK about mental health? I am now entering the second year of my doctoral program in the US and starting my clinical training at the Behavioural Health Psychiatric Centre in Los Angeles. I am the only Pakistani student in my whole program (4 cohorts above me) who is specialising in Neuropsychology. This is a field where students and practitioners are missing from South Asian backgrounds, which shows how important it is for us to consider pursuing Clinical Psychology. I think it’s about time we start normalising talking about mental health and begin taking therapy, just like we see a doctor for headaches and back pain.
Currently, I am working on writing a book chapter which focuses on cardiovascular diseases and HIV in LGBT people of colour from South Asian backgrounds. I am also working on a research paper exploring cardiovascular risk and substance abuse in sexual minorities and people of colour. I will also present my abstract (hopefully if accepted) in the International Stroke Conference in April 2021.