Alumni Highlight: Saumya Dave

Saumya Dave,

Author/Doctor

By Tai Sherman

Medical Partnership Alumna Saumya Dave is a writer, psychiatrist, and mental health advocate.

Dr. Saumya Dave’s (Class of 2015) new book What a Happy Family, was released this past June. As a writer, she enjoys exploring the unique dynamics that exist in families. Her debut novel, Well-Behaved Indian Women, was featured in The New York Times Book Review, ELLE, Bustle, Buzzfeed, and more.

Saumya was born in India and grew up in Atlanta. In her seventh grade journal, she wrote: "I will be a psychiatrist and writer someday". She is a graduate of Georgia Tech and the AU/UGA Medical Partnership, where she was an inductee into the Gold Humanism Honor Society.

She completed her psychiatry residency at Mount Sinai Beth Israel, where she was a chief resident and an inductee into the AΩA Medical Honors Society. She completed a psychoanalytic fellowship with the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute.

Dr. Dave was recently interviewed by Mindy McGinnis, for the podcast, Writer Writer Pants on Fire. During that podcast, Dr. Dave discussed her path to being both a physician and a writer.

“I have been reading fiction for my entire life, so when I was a little girl, I wanted to be a doctor and a writer. It wasn’t until college when people said to me, you’re going to have to pick one, you can’t do both, people don’t do that, and I saw that reflected in the community and the greater world at large around me. So, I thought, okay, I do have to pick and I picked the pre-med part of it and thought, okay, I will write later, I will write in my free time. I learned very quickly that it doesn’t always work that way. I know there are a lot of disciplined people out there who can put in their time to all the things that matter to them. But I learned about myself that if I didn’t block off hours and if I didn’t commit to writing the way I committed to this other career that I was going after, it would get lost eventually. And that was something that really scared me.

From a young age, as the daughter of immigrants, as someone who felt like an outsider many, many times growing up, I turned to fiction to teach me about life. When my debut book came out in July of 2020, I learned by going to a lot of virtual book clubs that a lot of people turned to fiction to teach them about life, to comfort them, to entertain them.

During my residency training, when I was learning about the ins and outs of psychiatry, I realized I wasn’t finding very much fiction that explored mental health. There are books out there that do

Campus Dean Dr. Shelley Nuss and Campus Associate Dean for Medical Education Dr. Scott Richardson are excited to read Dr. Saumya Dave's new book “What a Happy Family”. (Her first book, “Well-Behaved Indian Women”, was released last year.)

that and they do it really, really well. I just couldn’t find one about a family and about the things they do and don’t tell each other, the roles they put on each other and the roles they play they when they’re together and how those roles impact their own selves when they’re not even with their family members, like in their workplaces and their romantic relationships and their friendships.

So, after my debut book came out, I thought, what if this is what the second book is about? What if I put together some of the insights I’ve learned through my psychiatry training and through seeing patients and put it through fiction and see how that comes out as a story, the kind of story that I always hope to read.

I also believe there’s so much to be said about keeping our passions alive and present no matter what they are. All the writers I’ve met over the years, they feel as though it’s this core part of who they are. So, when they don’t write for very long periods of time, they want to return to it. And of course, it is difficult, because life happens and so many things might be going on. But I’ve always found that, whether it’s a week, a month, a year, whatever it is, people who love words want to return to words.

One thing that was going through my head a lot when I was in college and I was completely focused on the premed path was, is my future self going to be resentful? That question kept coming up again and again and I realized that I don’t want to be resentful when I’m older. I was in my early twenties at that time, and I just knew I didn’t want to be resentful. I asked myself, what can I do to prevent future resentment? And that question has helped me in a lot of daily and longer-term decisions.”

Dr. Dave has a passion for women’s mental health and wellness. She and her husband, Samir Sheth, founded thisisforHER, a nonprofit which uses art therapy to improve mental health awareness and education for women and girls in low- and middleincome countries. She is a practicing therapist, as well as an adjunct professor of psychiatry at Mount Sinai, where she teaches narrative medicine.

You can read and hear this podcast in its entirety at: mindymcginnis.com/podcast/saumya-dave

Dave is an alumna from the Medical Partnership’s Class of 2015. She completed her psychiatry residency at Mount Sinai Beth Israel, where she was a chief resident. She is currently a practicing therapist and an adjunct professor at Mount Sinai in New York City.