When Stephanie Rolin moved to the United States from Belgium as a child, she brought with her a simple truth: You don’t punish people for being sick.  

Years later, as Rolin established herself as a physician, public health expert, and forensic psychiatrist, she discovered just how radical this childhood insight really was. She came to realize that the American healthcare system had developed an elaborate architecture for doing precisely what her childhood self had found unthinkable. In courtrooms, judges sentenced the mentally ill to prison instead of treatment. In emergency rooms, psychiatric patients shuttled between police custody and medical care, while in county jails, people cycled through cells instead of therapy.  

With each new experience witnessed, Rolin’s childhood understanding of compassion collided with a justice system which seemed to have forgotten it. Gradually, her career became an extended meditation on a moral question: How did a society convince itself that the sick deserve punishment over care? 

The Cosmopolitan Clinician 

Today, Rolin, MD ’14, MPH ’10, is a forensic psychiatrist at Howard University studying what she calls “the cracks between medicine and law.” After completing undergraduate studies at McGill University in Canada, she traveled to Australia to research health inequities at an indigenous clinic. That experience opened her eyes to how geography and history shape health outcomes. “Coming to the U.S., I noticed immediately how fragile the safety net was,” she says. “In Belgium or Canada, healthcare isn’t something you fear. Here, it can bankrupt you.” 

That awareness led her to the master’s program at The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy & Clinical Practice in 2008. “I didn't want a public health degree that was all theory,” she explains. “I wanted to be in clinics, implementing change.”  

At Dartmouth, this often meant deploying real solutions that were as practical as they were simple. In one instance, Rolin worked with rural providers on billing practices—unglamorous work that kept clinics open and reduced patient costs.  

After completing her MPH, Rolin sought out more hands-on experience, and deferred medical school at Geisel for a year to join the CDC in Alaska, where she worked to reduce health disparities in remote villages during disease outbreaks. Once at Geisel, she shifted her focus from infectious diseases to psychiatry after a profoundly affecting psychiatry rotation. Seeing that people with serious mental illnesses had the worst outcomes on every medical service, and a life expectancy of around 60 years in the U.S., left an indelible impression on her. 

Listening to Her Intuition 

With a medical degree from Geisel, Rolin began a residency at New York Presbyterian Hospital in 2014, after which she became a fellow in forensic psychiatry in 2018. “Every day, you have patients brought in by police, inmates from Rikers, and judges who order treatment,” she recollects. Once, Rolin watched a young man shackled in a courtroom after experiencing a psychotic break. Patients were discharged without insurance because they lived on the wrong side of a state border. Now, the childhood instinct she’d carried from Belgium had a professional urgency. 

Following that gut feeling led Rolin to a clinical research fellowship in forensic psychiatry at Columbia University, where she later became as an assistant professor in the Division of Law, Ethics and Psychiatry. “If something in the system feels wrong, that’s your starting point,” she would tell students. 

The Sound of Science 

Today, Rolin’s research focuses on early psychosis and violence, and how to reduce the mass incarceration of people with mental illnesses. Beginning at Dartmouth and continuing throughout her career, research for Rolin has been a channel to clarify topics often misunderstood or stigmatized. During her time at Geisel, Rolin co-authored a now highly cited study, published in 2015, where she surveyed how family physicians in Vermont and New Hampshire could reduce opioid dependence with underutilized treatments. 

A litany of accolades has tailed Rolin’s devotion to service. In 2013, she earned recognition from the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry. At Geisel, her passion for social justice brought two standout distinctions: the Diversity Visionary Leadership Award and the Award for Excellence in Clinical Psychiatry. Most recently, her alma mater also celebrated Rolin’s trajectory of excellence with Dartmouth’s Young Alumni Award in 2024.  

For Rolin, excellence also means speaking up about what she knows. “It’s not enough to do the science,” she says. “You have to tell the story in ways people can understand.” 

To use her voice, Rolin launched a podcast with her sister Alicia Rolin, MD, ScM, a pediatrician, called Rolin Forward in 2024. Together, the physician-sisters tackle headlines, break down Supreme Court cases, and unpack topics ranging from mental health policy to parenting, public health, and the quirks of everyday life.  

A Balanced Life 

For Rolin, policy is another medium to promote her message. While at Dartmouth, Rolin recalls how inspired she felt when, after New Hampshire expanded the Affordable Care Act, she saw the positive impact on people in real time. “Almost overnight, people finally had coverage and could access care instead of delaying it until a crisis,” she says. 

In 2025, Rolin joined the Council on Psychiatry and the Law of the American Psychiatric Association, a national body that shapes policy and advises on the complex intersection of mental health and the legal system. With fellow Dartmouth alum Megan Flores, MS ’13, she published a paper in JAMA Psychiatry about the political threats to NIMH data integrity. To be closer to the heart of national policymaking, Rolin also moved to Washington, D.C. with her husband and two-year-old daughter. This fall, she begins a new chapter as an assistant professor at Howard University Hospital, building on the decades-long partnership between Howard and Dartmouth’s psychiatry departments. 

Asked what makes her proudest, Rolin doesn’t mention her publications or her positions. Instead, she points to forging harmony among family, work, and being aligned with her mission and values. “Living a balanced life,” she says.  

It’s a fitting answer from someone whose childhood sense of justice—never punishing illness—has shaped an adult career devoted to improving mental healthcare in America. But it makes sense. To build bridges between medicine and law, research and practice, suffering and systems—worlds that too often remain separate—balance is essential. 

“That’s the hardest kind of success,” she says. 

Written by: Jeremy Martin