Rhitu Chatterjee
Rhitu Chatterjee is a health correspondent with NPR, with a focus on mental health. In addition to writing about the latest developments in psychology and psychiatry, she reports on the prevalence of different mental illnesses and new developments in treatments.
Chatterjee explores the underlying causes of mental health disorders – the complex web of biological, socio-economic, and cultural factors that influence how mental health problems manifest themselves in different groups – and how our society deals with the mentally ill. She has a particular interest in mental health problems faced by the most vulnerable, especially pregnant women and children, as well as racial minorities and undocumented immigrants.
Chatterjee has reported on how chronic stress from racism has a devastating impact on pregnancy outcomes in black women. She has reported on the factors that put adolescents and youth on a path to school shootings, and what some schools are doing keep them off that path. She has covered the rising rates of methamphetamine and opioid use by pregnant women, and how some cities are helping these women stay off the drugs, have healthy pregnancies, and raise their babies on their own. She has also written about the widespread levels of loneliness and lack of social connection in America and its consequences of people's physical health.
Before starting at NPR's health desk in 2018, Chatterjee was an editor for NPR's The Salt, where she edited stories about food, culture, nutrition, and agriculture. In that role, she also produced a short online food video series called "Hot Pot: A Dish, A Memory," which featured dishes from a particular country as made by a person who grew up with the dish. The series was produced in collaboration with NPR's Goats & Soda blog.
Prior to that, Chatterjee reported on current affairs from New Delhi for PRI's The World, and covered science and health news for Science Magazine. Before that, she was based in Boston as a science correspondent with PRI's The World.
Throughout her career, Chatterjee has reported on everything from basic scientific discoveries to issues at the intersection of science, society, and culture. She has covered the legacy of the Bhopal gas tragedy in 1984, the world's largest industrial disaster. She has reported on a mysterious epidemic of chronic kidney disease in Sri Lanka and India. While in New Delhi, she also covered women's issues. Her reporting went beyond the breaking news headlines about sexual violence to document the underlying social pressures faced by Indian girls and women.
She has won two reporting grants from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and was awarded a certificate of merit by the Gabriel Awards in 2014.
Chatterjee has mentored student fellows by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, as well as young journalists for the Society of Environmental Journalists' mentorship program. She has also taught science writing at the Santa Fe Science Writing Workshop.
She did her undergraduate work in Darjeeling, India. She has two master's degrees—a Master of Science in biotechnology from Visva-Bharati in India, and a Master of Arts in journalism from the University of Missouri.
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Scientists have discovered a part of a fossilized human skull that's around 180,000 years old. It is now the oldest human fossil outside Africa. -
President Trump attacked his former adviser Steve Bannon after Bannon criticized the Trump campaign in a new book. Also, former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort is suing the Justice Department.
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Scientists have uncovered the fossil of an ancestral penguin off the east coast of New Zealand. It was one of the earliest known species of penguin and also one of the largest. -
How will our diets shift as climate change causes sea-level rise and coastal flooding? Photographer Allie Wist attempts to answer that with pictures of an imagined "post-sea-level-rise dinner party." -
A new study of the dental plaques of three Neanderthals reveals surprising facts about their lives, including what they ate, the diseases that ailed them and how they self-medicated (and smooched). -
New research calculates the greenhouse gas emissions involved in making bread, from wheat field to bakery. The vast majority of emissions come from one step in the process: farming. -
An Indian woman suffered through domestic violence for 20 years. Then she changed her life by going to school, but it wasn't to learn. It was to cook. -
Anorexia and bulimia, eating disorders once thought to affect only girls and women, affect a growing number of boys and men. Boys as young as 9 and 10 are feeling the pressure to be ripped and muscular, psychologists say. But they can have a hard time finding a treatment program geared to males.
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A newly discovered fossil of a fish in China changes what scientists know about the origins of jaws. It turns out, human jaws are remarkably similar to the jaw of this 419-million-year-old fish. That suggests jaws evolved much earlier than previously thought.
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Bananas are the most popular fruit in America, and demand is growing worldwide, too. But growing bananas requires a lot of pesticides. And a new study shows that some of those chemicals are ending up in caimans living downstream from banana plantations in Costa Rica, where many of the bananas that Americans eat are grown.
