Jill Afrin
Jill Afrin (born 1962) is a psychiatrist who specializes in working with deaf populations in South Carolina, and is also credited as the first telepsychiatrist in the state. Biography Afrin was born in Suffern, New York in 1962. Jeanette Newman, her mother was a social worker, public relation counselor, and a journalist while Edward Newman worked as a crime reporter who died when she was 4 years old. Afrin earned her undergraduate degree in biochemistry from State University of New York at Binghamton in 1984. The same year Afrin enrolled into Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. After graduating with her medical degree, Dr. Afrin completed an internship and residency in psychiatry at the Medical University of South Carolina. She was later awarded a fellowship in community and emergency psychiatry in 1992. Throughout college and medical training she learned sign language which she later on applied in her career. In 1989, the South Carolina Department of Mental Health began the Deaf Services Program to provide psychiatric help to the deaf and hard of hearing throughout the state. While case managers and clinical staff were fluent in sign-language, the non-signing psychiatrists had to rely on the clinical staff and the case managers