Tam Dinh, a Ph.D. candidate from the USC School of Social Work, has been awarded a two-year pre-doctoral research fellowship from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) for more than $30,000.

NIMH provides grants to promising doctoral students to help prepare them for careers as mental health researchers who can conduct innovative multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research relevant to its mission of research focused on understanding, treating and preventing mental disorders and promoting mental health.

"It felt really good to get rewarded for my hard work. It also gave me more motivation and confidence to continue to apply for grants," Dinh said. "Going through this grant process has been a great learning experience. It helps prepare me for what I will have to do when I become a faculty member."

The grant will be used toward the completion of her dissertation and cover additional training, living and travel expenses, as well as a computer, statistical software and other necessary materials.

Dinh's study will examine the contextual factors that influence rehabilitative outcomes [such as] employment, independent living and socialization for individuals with serious and persistent mental illness (SPMI). The contextual factors she plans to look at are ethnicity and types of support available to individuals with SPMI. The study will use secondary data from two longitudinal research studies conducted over a period of 10 years at various community-based psychosocial rehabilitation programs in Southern California.

"My primary career goal is to develop a meaningful research agenda that examines the psychosocial rehabilitative experience of ethnically diverse individuals with serious and persistent mental illness," she said. "Specifically, I am interested in exploring and understanding the contextual significance of socio-cultural factors on service utilization and functional outcomes."

Dinh is supervised by Professors John Brekke and Ann Marie Yamada.