Dr. Yasmin N. Roberts, a clinical psychologist on the staff of a nonprofit psychiatric hospital in Massachusetts, died of pancreatic cancer Monday at her parents' Guilford home. She was 37.

Dr. Roberts was born in Baltimore and raised in Guilford, graduating from Friends School in 1983. She earned a bachelor's degree in anthropology from Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, in 1987.

After college, she took a job as a mental health care worker at Cambridge Hospital in Cambridge, Mass., and "while working with an underclass of Haitian women" there, "she found her clear calling as a psychologist," said her father, Dr. Paul F. Roberts, a Baltimore psychiatrist and psychoanalyst.

"She was known from early grade school years to be a champion of downtrodden individuals and groups and to pursue social causes with verve and imagination," he said.

Yasmin Roberts earned her master's and doctorate in psychology from the University of Denver's Graduate School of Professional Psychology in 1995, and continued postdoctoral studies at the University of Maryland Medical Center while working with city elementary schoolchildren.

She completed an additional four-year postdoctoral fellowship in 1996 at the Austen Riggs Center, a small, nonprofit psychiatric hospital in Stockbridge, Mass. With a specialty in working with treatment-resistant patients with life-threatening psychological problems, she had been a full-time staff member there since 2000. Dr. Roberts was also an eating disorders consultant and maintained a private psychology practice.

Dr. Roberts, who lived in Great Barrington, Mass., enjoyed learning foreign languages, and traveled extensively in Europe, Africa, Australia and New Zealand. She enjoyed theater, writing plays and cooking.

She was also an accomplished scuba diver and runner who completed the Dublin Marathon in Ireland in 1998.

"Her main interests in life were her friends. She had so many friends, and she enjoyed spending time with them," her father said.

Since her pancreatic cancer was diagnosed in June, Dr. Roberts had lived with her parents.

A memorial service will be held at 1 p.m. Saturday at the Stony Run Friends Meeting House, 5116 N. Charles St.

In addition to her father, she is survived by her mother, Dr. Mary S. Roberts of Guilford; a brother, Philip S. Roberts of Stoneleigh; and a nephew.

Memorial donations may be made to the Friends School Scholarship Fund, 5114 N. Charles St., Baltimore 21210.