Raksha Kandlur Named 2025 Morgan T. Sammons Doctoral Student Award Winner

The National Register of Health Service Psychologists is proud to present the 2025 Morgan T. Sammons Doctoral Student Award to Raksha Kandlur. 

This award, named in honor of the National Register’s third Chief Executive Officer, is presented annually to a currently enrolled student in good standing in an APA- or CPA-accredited doctoral program in psychology who are student members of the National Register Associate Program.   

The National Register’s Awards Committee honors the recipient of this award with a $5,000 stipend to further the development of a clinically oriented research project.  

Upon receiving the award, Raksha said, “I am truly honored to receive this award. It is especially meaningful to be recognized by the National Register, an organization deeply committed to the advancement of health service psychologists. This support affirms the importance of research aimed at improving suicide prevention efforts and reducing mental health disparities among underserved populations. It also reinforces the value of research that brings greater visibility to those who are too often left out of traditional care systems and the importance of more accessible and effective mental health care. I am sincerely appreciative of this recognition and the encouragement it provides as I move forward in my training.”   

Raksha Kandlur, MA, (she/her) is a sixth-year graduate student in the Clinical Psychology PhD program at the Virginia Consortium Program in Clinical Psychology (Old Dominion University, Norfolk State University). Currently, she is on her predoctoral clinical internship at the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System. Her research program focuses on advancing suicide prevention efforts. She is interested in understanding risk and adaptive processes, stressful life experiences, and suicidal thoughts and behaviors among individuals from marginalized backgrounds, approached through a culturally informed and developmentally sensitive lens. She is particularly committed to serving hard-to-reach and underserved populations, including individuals with limited access to mental health care, those living in low-resource settings, and people navigating multiple forms of systemic and structural oppression. She is also passionate about using multi-modal research approaches to comprehensively understand suicidal thoughts and behaviors, barriers to treatment engagement, and mental health disparities. Her work ultimately seeks to inform more equitable, accessible, and culturally responsive suicide prevention care.  

Raksha has been banking credentials through the National Register since 2025. 

About the National Register of Health Service Psychologists  

The National Register of Health Service Psychologists was established in 1974 and is the largest nonprofit credentialing organization for psychologists and psychology doctoral students. The National Register is an independent nonprofit organization dedicated to improving healthcare by identifying psychologists who meet specific education and training standards, and by verifying these professionals to consumers, healthcare organizations, and regulatory bodies. The National Register currently credentials 10,000 Health Service Psychologists and has approximately 5,000 psychology doctoral student and postdoctoral trainee members in its Associate Program. For more information, visit www.nationalregister.org.  

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For more information about this announcement, contact the National Register at 202.783.7663.