Robin Warshaw

Racism, racial injustice, and racist treatment practices are woven into psychiatry’s history up to the present day. That’s why racism continues to deeply affect mental health for people who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC). Two Columbia University physicians looked at why psychiatrists need to consider how structural racism and other racist experiences affect their patients' lives and depression.

Young women aren't supposed to experience bone loss, just as they aren't supposed to be diagnosed with breast cancer. Yet those conditions are related and they both happened to Kiana Wooten, a chef from Monmouth Junction, New Jersey. Chemotherapy, hormonal therapy, and other vital breast cancer treatments may thin and weaken bones — especially if the therapies reduce or block estrogen. My profile of Kiana and what she did about the effects of treatment on her bone health.

For 30 years, the Gateway to Success program at Arcadia University has helped hundreds of students make the transition from unsure students to confident college graduates. My article about the program looked at how it supports students from varying backgrounds, many the first in their families to attend college, with academic skills, guidance, and a community. The program also steered students through disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and helped many stay on target with their goals.

Being on social media can feel like falling down a rabbit hole into a complex and confusing world. Lisa Singh, research professor at Georgetown University's McCourt School of Public Policy, thrives on making sense of the data found in online messages. My article on Singh and her research, for McCourt's Policy Perspectives magazine, looks at how millions of tweets on COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter provide insight into misinformation, disease spread, social movement growth, and more.

Los Angeles has more than 58,000 homeless adults and children. This case study looks at a multi-pronged "housing first" program that combines efforts from several public departments to help homeless residents gain stability, improve their living situations and address health issues. One in a series of program case studies I wrote for the Center for Health Care Strategies, a nonprofit policy center.

Women now equal men in medical school enrollment across the U.S. Yet that parity hasn't fixed what women in medicine still face: gender discrimination, sexual harassment, lower pay and fewer leadership positions. My cover story for the alumni magazine of the Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University--the last U.S. medical school to admit women (in 1961).

Even if you have chronic medical conditions or are older than 65 (or 75 or 85), you can donate your organs after death and help some of the 113,000+ people on the U.S. transplant waiting list.

There's more than one way to ease cancer pain. What works for one person may differ from what works for someone else, even with the same cancer diagnosis or type of pain. This article looks at current and near-future approaches to treat pain from cancer and side effects from therapies.

A look at how SFS professors and students, in the US and abroad, scrambled and innovated during an academic time like no other. SFS Magazine (Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University).

Rural Americans—who make up at least 15 to 20% of the U.S. population—face inequities that result in worse health care than that of urban and suburban residents.
These rural health disparities are deeply rooted in economic, social, racial, ethnic, geographic, and health workforce factors.

Adults with schizophrenia have an elevated risk of dying from suicide. Yet there’s only limited understanding of when and why people with schizophrenia die of suicide —in part because research studies have looked at relatively small groups of patients.
Now a new study from Columbia looked at a large population of adults diagnosed with schizophrenia. I wrote about the findings for Columbia's Department of Psychiatry.