We’re a team of psychiatry residents that have come together to create a mental health educational podcast because we saw a need for something catered to our specialty at our training level.

In each episode, we pick a common psychiatric condition and talk about its diagnosis or management with a staff member from the Department of Psychiatry. Our idea originated at the University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and we hope to make this a widespread initiative.

Whether you’re sitting on a subway or jogging on a treadmill, you can learn about various psychiatric conditions on the go, brought to you by PsychEd.

Interested? Have a listen!

Lucy Chen

Dr. Lucy Chen is a psychiatrist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, working with the Women's Inpatient and General Adult Psychiatry population. She is a clinician-teacher with affiliation at the University of Toronto. She is a co-founding board member and host for PsychEd. She is passionate about medical education and has particular clinical interests in eating disorders, trauma therapy, and psychedelic treatment.

Yunlin Xue

Yunlin is a fourth-year psychiatry resident at the University of Toronto. She completed her BSc at McGill University, majoring in anatomy and cell biology, and her MD at the University of Toronto. After deciding she's actually more interested in looking into the mind rather than the body, she adopted a keen interest in psychiatry. She's still exploring subspecialties, but finds forensic psychiatry and personality disorders most fascinating. 

Fun facts about her include having a sweet tooth, finding everything amusing, and getting mild anxiety when asked to list a fun fact.

Aarti Rana

Aarti is a fourth-year psychiatry resident at the University of Toronto. Prior to pursing medicine, she studied literature and social sciences. She is interested in how knowledges from the biological sciences, social sciences, and humanities are integrated and operationalized in the practice of psychiatry. Her clinical interests include chronic pain, somatization, functional neurological disorders, and the biopsychosocial mechanisms of the placebo effect—how "mind" actually becomes "body" and vice versa.

Sabrina Agnihotri

Sabrina is a fourth-year psychiatry resident at the University of Toronto. She completed her BSc at York University, then an MSc, PhD, two post-doctoral fellowships, and an MD all at the University of Toronto. Broadly, her research interests lie within the field of neuropsychiatry, including mood and anxiety in youth affected by concussion, as well as the psychiatric comorbidities and treatments for Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder. One day, in what currently seems like the distant future, she envisions being the head of her own clinical lab. For now, though, she spends her free time running, playing video games, and spending too much money and time at Aritzia.

Shaoyuan (Randi) Wang

Randi is a first-year psychiatry resident at the University of Toronto. She completed her BA in Health Studies at Queen’s University, where she was first introduced to social justice activism. Her interests in include advocating for better mental health care and promoting health equity for marginalized populations, especially those living with HIV/AIDS. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, travelling, and eating her way through all the Toronto restaurants.

Audrey Le

Audrey is a fourth-year medical student at McGill University and hopes to pursue a future career in psychiatry. Prior to medical school, she had completed a DEC in Health Sciences and was admitted to McGill as part of the Med-P Program. She first became enamoured with the field of psychiatry during her third-year rotation and has only become increasingly passionate about mental health ever since. Currently, her passions include social and transcultural psychiatry, health advocacy, and medical education. Whenever she is not learning more about psychiatry, she is either producing other podcasts, such as her Life as a Doctor to Be podcast series, weightlifting, singing, or reading books about society and culture.

Jake Johnston

Jake is a fourth-year medical student at the University of British Columbia. He graduated top of his class from Serendipity Preschool (verification pending) in Abbotsford, BC and has spent the rest of his life living in the shadow of his precocious peak. His clinical and research interests are broad, but he is particularly intrigued by interventional psychiatry and emerging psychedelic therapies for mental health. He spends his free time skiing, mountain biking, exploring BC backcountry, and provoking his fiancé by enthusiastically sporting unconventional fashion attire (socks and Birkenstocks offer the perfect fusion of utility and comfort at any time of the year).

Saja Jaberi

Saja is an International Medical Graduate from the United Arab Emirates. Her passion for psychiatry started during fifth-year medical school and solidified while working as a clinical trial coordinator at Toronto Western Hospital’s Mood Disorders Psychopharmacology Unit. She is interested in exploring the shifting tide of conventional psychiatry through innovative clinical trials. Her passions include immigrant mental health and assertive community treatment teams and she is committed to empowering immigrants and marginalized communities while volunteering at the Canadian Centre for Victims of Torture.

Outside work, she considers herself a professional café loiterer, proudly declaring she can have unlimited caffeine without consequences then questioning why she never gets any sleep. She’s also not modest about how she can kill the dance floor with a bilaterally torn ACL.

Jordan Bawks

Jordan is a fifth-year psychiatry resident at the University of Toronto. He is also a big nerd who takes life way too seriously and everything else not seriously enough. His psychiatric interests are fairly general, but you can definitely get him riled up on bipolar spectrum, cancer psychiatry, psychedelic medicine, therapeutic communication, and the philosophy of psychiatry.

If you feed him caffeine, prepare to hear him diatribe about basically anything and drop his pen 10 times a minute as it twirls frantically in his fingers. His hobbies include compulsive book collecting, procrastinating on extra curricular activities, attempting to heal narcissistic injuries in the gym, and enthusiastically losing games of squash and chess.

Sarah Hanafi

Sarah is a fifth-year psychiatry resident at McGill University. She completed her MD at the University of Alberta after obtaining a BSc from McGill University. She grew up in Fort McMurray and Edmonton, Alberta — but tries to fool everyone into thinking she’s a native Montrealer. Between medical education and leadership, transcultural psychiatry, and neuropsychiatry, Sarah doesn’t get easily bored. When she’s not strolling the hospital wards, she spends her time engaged in advocacy work, wielding her pen, and scouting Montreal’s famed indie cafes.

Nikhita Singhal

Nikhita is a fourth-year psychiatry resident at the University of Toronto. She is passionate about engaging in advocacy work, striving for patient empowerment, exploring the humanities, and melding clinical practice with research. Specific areas of interest within psychiatry include psychedelic science, addictions medicine, psychotherapy, and working with child and adolescent populations… she also loves travelling as far and wide as possible, flooding her synapses with epinephrine, hiking, yoga, photography, graphic design, and cats.

Gurnaam Kasbia

Gurnaam is a psychiatrist in Guelph with the Canadian Mental Health Agency Waterloo-Wellington. He works with the Flexible Assertive Community Treatment Team and in single service outpatient care. He is passionate about treating individuals with severe and persistent mental illness and individuals living with trauma and personality disorders. He enjoys teaching medical learners and advocating for them during their medical training.

In his spare time, Gurnaam loves playing the guitar, traveling, and watching horror films.

Rebecca Marsh

Rebecca is a fourth-year medical student at the University of Toronto. She completed her BSc in Psychology: Research Specialization, with minors in Chemistry and Biology, at Wilfrid Laurier University. During a summer position working in the justice system, she became passionate about mental health advocacy. In addition to psychiatry, her interests include working with children and adolescents in high risk environments, particularly those involved in the justice system. She is also passionate about education and advocacy initiatives aimed at reducing stigma surrounding mental illness and addiction. In her spare time you can find her drinking too much coffee, listening to podcasts, hiking with her dog, and watching bad TV with friends.

Ari Geist

Ari is a second-year psychiatry resident at the University of Toronto. She completed her BAs at the University of Guelph in psychology and neuroscience, and her MD at McMaster University. She is passionate about medical education and physician wellness. Her clinical interests remain broad, and she looks forward to continuing to discover the various career paths within psychiatry! In her spare time, she loves to try new restaurants and explore the various hiking trails in and around the city.

Angad Singh

Angad is a second-year medical student at McMaster University, where he also completed his undergraduate studies in child health. He is passionate about the intersection of medical and psychiatric illness and the discovery of novel psychotropic drugs. In addition to psychiatry, he is interested in exploring behaviour through the humanities and promoting policy change through system-level research. In his spare time, Angad enjoys riding his bike, writing fiction, and critiquing movies.

Gaurav Sharma

Gaurav is a psychiatry resident at the University of Toronto. He has an academic interest in prevention and early response to psychosis and understanding psychotic illnesses from a multidisciplinary biopsychosocial lens, including learning from people with lived experience. He is a regular contributor to PsychEd podcasts and has a passion for knowledge translation to make scientifically complex topics more easily accessible to learners and the public. In his free time, he enjoys learning about urban planning, biking around the city, and listening to hip hop.

Alex Raben

Alex is a new staff psychiatrist at the University of Toronto and Center for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). He is a co-founding board member, host, and executive director for PsychEd. He has a passion for helping people with chronic mental illness using the recovery model. Alex’s other interests include medical education/scholarship, leadership, and — surprise, surprise — podcasts. He can also occasionally be found having fun running on trails or hanging out at his local toastmasters club.

Bruce Fage

Bruce is a newly graduated staff at the University of Toronto and the Center for Addiction and Mental Health working within acute care and general psychiatry. Bruce is passionate about medical politics and health systems, working to develop models of care that meet the needs of the people we serve. Outside of clinical work, Bruce enjoys reading, writing, hiking, and biking. 

Carrol Zhou

Carrol is a fifth-year psychiatry resident at the University of Toronto. She is also the proud mom of her now 15 month old daughter named Laurel, and is fairly confident that Laurel has adopted a secure attachment style to handle most life situations. She used to be in the Clinician Scientist Stream and her research interests included the interface between psychiatry and other areas of medicine, as well as medical education tools to improve access and quality of psychiatric care in both urban and rural settings. In her spare time, her interests include yoga, culinary arts, and wine tasting.

Weam Sieffien

Weam is a fourth-year medical student at the University of Toronto. He completed his BHSc at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology. In addition to psychiatry, his interests include medical education, suicide prevention, and cultural psychiatry. In his spare time, Weam plays soccer and cheers for Liverpool. He also enjoys traveling the globe one continent at a time and watching movies in between call shifts.

Gray Meckling

Gray is a fourth-year medical student at the University of Toronto and he completed a BSc in Biology at the University of British Columbia. He will be applying to psychiatry for residency and is still exploring the many career paths in this field. Gray is from Vancouver, BC and can be found hiking the west coast mountains during breaks from medical school. His other interests include mindfulness meditation, podcasts, and science fiction movies.

Anita Corsini

Anita Corsini is a social worker currently working in clinical education, knowledge translation and exchange. She holds a Masters of Social Work from Ryerson University, where she wrote her major research paper on the use of digital storytelling in social justice and community change projects. Anita has experience in counselling working with children, youth, and families, and is currently really curious about the intersection between technology and mental health interventions. She also happens to like cooking, camping, binge-listening to podcasts, and going to the movies.

Vincent Tang

Vincent is a second-year psychiatry resident at the University of Toronto, where he also went to medical school. Before this, he did his undergrad at the University of British Columbia, studying both physiology and psychology. He is passionate about the intersections of social justice, health equity, queer health, and mental health. In his free time, you can find him struggling to run around the city with its abundance of traffic, video gaming, and eating his way through his favourite sushi restaurants in Toronto.

Sena Gok

Sena is an international medical graduate and avid learner in psychiatry. She brings experience in addiction, psychedelic therapy, and homelessness studies. Currently pursuing a postdoctoral fellowship in geriatric mental health, she shares her passion for medical education through various podcasts. Beyond work, she enjoys volleyball and outdoor adventures.

Judy Truong

Kara Dempster

Lu Gao

Henry Barron