In her first year of post-secondary study, Marissa Rakus says, she was very shy.

“I was a very quiet, anxious student coming into university for sure,” she says. Now a doctoral student of psychology, she says serving as a peer mentor “honestly changed the whole trajectory of my university career and even my life.”

“Marissa was a student in my Introduction to Psychology course. She was an excellent student, but I don’t think she ever talked in class,” recalls Jill Singleton-Jackson, professor of applied social psychology, and associate dean for student experience and inter-faculty programs.

“Toward the end of her first year she really blossomed from a very shy, quiet (but always so bright!) student to becoming active in the department and a mentor for Intro. to Psychology. Then she became a senior mentor for the leadership course.

“Marissa was accepted to the applied social psychology graduate program, and I am so fortunate to be her advisor and have the opportunity to watch her amazing progress as a scholar and researcher.”

Rakus says she has always been interested in women’s health research.

“I know a lot of women in my life, and even myself, struggle with the interactions with health care providers or just formal services in general.”

In the third year of her undergrad, she reached out to Dr. Jackson regarding getting more involved. Her professor started giving jobs helping with various events. Rakus also connected with professor Kendall Soucie, who runs a research program studying the health care experiences of women with reproductive issues, and especially endometriosis diagnostic experiences with polycystic ovary syndrome.

“I reached out to Dr. Soucie saying that I was really interested in learning more about the research, getting involved in research, and doing whatever I can, creating transcripts and working my way into the research,” says Rakus. “I was interested in going to grad school at this point. So, I joined her lab in my third year, and I think that's where my love for women’s health research sparked.”

Rakus started exploring the literature and found she was drawn towards gender-based violence research and women’s health: “I would say that being in Dr. Soucie’s lab and actively participating in different research projects is what brought that about for me.”

From there she did her master’s thesis while working at the Welcome Centre Shelter for Women and Families, and later acquired a job there.

“I did interviews with the women there, and I was very lucky to have two people in my committee, Drs. Patti Fritz and Betty Barrett, who both had a connection to the Welcome Centre,” she says. “It was a full circle moment for me. I found an area of research that I am passionate about.”

Rakus found it “eye-opening” working with this population.

“I realized the research I do is so important,” she says. “To get first-hand stories from these people and be in that environment, because I remember stepping in for those interviews. When I walked into the shelter, I almost felt scared.”

Today, Rakus has completed the first year of her doctorate journey.

Before a doctoral student can start their dissertation, they must do a systematic literature review on a topic that they are interested in, usually this topic will be their dissertation topic. Rakus wants to focus on medical gaslighting.

“Specifically women, because that’s the population that it happens to most often: marginalized, racialized women,” says Rakus. “Their experiences with being invalidated, belittled, and not taken seriously by health-care providers.

“So that's where I’m at right now. In Dr. Soucie’s lab, we’re going to start a project where we do an online study with women about their experiences, just to get some preliminary data, because that’s what I do want to look at for my dissertation, and possibly conducting focus groups with women to hear their experiences.”

The next step would be to come up with some sort of deliverable on results and offer health-care providers information on how to do better.

“When I’m searching for medical gaslighting more generally, I find all these studies that come up about women, women, women, even when I’m not actually searching for that,” says Rakus. “It’s because the medical system is built on and based on male symptomology and their anatomy and built by men as well. I don’t think women were, from what I've seen so far, even involved in medical studies until the 1990s, which is not that long ago.”

Rakus is now the graduate co-ordinator for the interdisciplinary Health Research Centre for the Study of Violence against Women.

“We also are collaborating, and I’m working as a community liaison between the Research Centre. We have a Violence Against Women Coordinating Committee for the City of Windsor and Essex County,” she says. “They work with all of the different organizations within Windsor that focus on intimate partner violence.”

Rakus’s biggest takeaway from her academic journey so far is that you need to push yourself out of your comfort zone.

“That’s what I had to do to be where I am now,” she says. “I wouldn’t be in grad school if I didn’t have that friend who pushed me, and I stepped out of that comfort zone, and mid panic attack too,” says Rakus. “So yes, more experiences, and there are so many possibilities in university. If you don’t take advantage of them, it’s a personal loss really.”