Mary Bitta, PhD, is an implementation scientist specializing in mental and brain health. Her work focuses on developing and testing contextually relevant interventions to address the treatment gap for mental, neurological, and substance use disorders in low-resource settings. She has led and collaborated on numerous impactful research projects across sub-Saharan Africa. Notably, she founded Difu Simo, a non-profit organization based in rural Kenya that uses participatory approaches to tackle stigma against individuals with mental and brain health problems.
Mary is interested in developing strategies for mental health education, research, and care. Her academic journey, marked by a Ph.D. in Psychiatry from the University of Oxford, United Kingdom (February 2023), and a Master's in Global Mental Health from King's College London (September 2017), has led to her current research focus on bridging the treatment gap for mental and brain health disorders in low-resource settings.
Dr. Bitta is actively collaborating on several projects aimed at improving mental and brain health in low-resource settings. In addition to her appointments at AKU-BMI and Harvard Medical School, she serves as a visiting scientist at the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Oxford and the KEMRI Wellcome Trust Research Programme in Kilifi, Kenya. A complete list of her published work can be accessed using this link