Dr. Dena T. Smith
Associate Professor · Tenured
Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Public Health School of Public Policy
About
Dr. Smith is an associate professor of sociology at UMBC. She received her MA (2006) and PhD (2011) from Rutgers University. She was an assistant professor of sociology at Goucher College until 2014 when she began as an assistant professor of sociology in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Public Health at UMBC. Dr. Smith's book, MEDICINE OVER MIND: NAVIGATING MENTAL HEALTH PRACTICE IN THE BIOMEDICAL ERA, was published by Rutgers Press in 2019.Research interests
Dr. Smith's research is in the sociology of mental health and illness. Her research focuses in two areas. The first mental health practice, specifically practitioners' experiences of and opinions about treatment. She explores the impact of biomedical thinking and intervention on mental health practice for practitioners with a range of training in both talk therapy and psychopharmacology. In a second line of research, Dr. Smith and colleagues assess factors that predict men's mental health troubles. Smith and her colleagues suggest that masculinity is a key factor that underlies men's mental illness and distress - an area in need of significant further investigation.Teaching interests
Dr. Smith teaches sociological research methods, as well as various courses in medical sociology including Social Dimensions of Health and Illness, and Sociology of Mental Health and Illness.Education
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Ph D, Sociology
— Rutgers University (2011) Meaning-Making in a Medical World: The Art of Talk Therapy, The Science of the Biological Model, and the Boundaries in between
- MA, Sociology — Rutgers University (2006)
- BA, Sociology and French — Goucher College (2003)