Saumya Dave

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

As a writer, she enjoys exploring the unique dynamics that exist in immigrant families. Her debut novel, Well-Behaved Indian Women, was inspired by her own experiences and those of the strong women who surrounded her. It will be published by Berkley / Penguin Random House in Summer 2020. Her essays, articles, and poetry have been featured in outlets including The New York Times, ABC News, Refinery29, and HuffPost, among others.

Saumya 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 middle-income countries. She is a practicing therapist as well as an Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry at Mount Sinai, where she teaches a Narrative Medicine class.

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 Medical College of Georgia, 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, an inductee into the AΩA Medical Honors Society, and completed a Psychoanalytic Fellowship with the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute.