Research Projects Updates

Lately, I’ve been working on a new research project with my mentor Dr. Ben Lee. It’s about depression, but not just in the way we usually talk about it. My research question is: How do Ayurvedic, Traditional Chinese, and Western biomedical systems conceptualize and treat depression, and what do these approaches reveal about culturally embedded understandings of mind and body? 

Basically, I’m trying to understand how different cultures view mental health. Some focus on the body, some on the mind, and some on a balance of both. It’s been really interesting to see how deeply culture shapes not just how people feel, but how they understand what they’re feeling in the first place. 

From my UCSB SRA program, our paper has been submitted to the Journal of Emerging Investigators (JEI). I’m hoping this one actually gets published. My last project didn’t. I submitted it to The Schola and got rejected, which was kind of rough after all the work I put into it. I didn’t want to give up on it though, so I made some edits and submitted it to The Scholarly Review instead. Still waiting to hear back. 

Research is honestly kind of exhausting sometimes. You spend weeks or months writing, revising, and checking every little citation, just to get a rejection letter that’s two sentences long. But I’ve learned that the process matters just as much as the result. Every time I revise a paper or dive into a new topic, I feel like I’m getting better at thinking, writing, and actually understanding the stuff I’m researching. 

It’s not always fun, and it definitely isn’t easy, but I keep coming back to it. There’s something really cool about asking a question that doesn’t have a simple answer and trying to figure it out anyway. 

- AnthroManTalks