In Memoriam: Alvin F. Poussaint, MD, A Model of Black Mental Health

PSYCHIATRIC VIEWS ON THE DAILY NEWS

Perhaps it was just a coincidence, a narcissistic connection on my part. In a way, it seems highly impertinent for me to bring together the death of one of psychiatry’s greats with a recent column. Yet maybe it makes some psychological and serendipitous sense.

The column last Monday was the imagined crying of our Statue of Liberty and, among other things, Alvin F. Poussaint, MD, was a force for the liberty of the dispossessed. Moreover, his death came at a time when diversity, equity, and inclusion endeavors are becoming dismantled.

His New York Times obituary was on February 24.¹ Dr Poussaint was a Haitian American son of immigrants who lived until he was 90 years old. He came to prominence by the late 1970s, one of those periodic times when antiracist endeavors were being challenged by some backlash. At that same time, at Baylor College of Medicine, some colleagues and I developed the first national model educational program for psychiatric residents on cultural psychiatry.² Racism was a particular focus, so the work of Dr Poussaint was a lodestar model for us to follow. He had already been involved in 2 important books which seemed to balance the external obstacles of racism with the responsibility of Black individuals for their own lives, especially to instill pride into Black children.^3,4

Most of his career was based at Harvard Medical School, where he became a professor and associate dean. He retired in 2019, the same year he received the American Psychiatric Association (APA)’s Distinguished Service Award.

He found various creative and original ways to address racism. One was being a consultant to various popular television shows about Black families. Another was his ongoing consideration about whether racism was a mental illness.⁵ The APA concluded that it should not be a formal diagnostic category for a patient because so many Americans were racist that even extreme delusional racism could be considered normative! Therefore, it was thought, racism is better thought of as a social aberration than as an individual mental disorder. Even if agreeing with that conclusion, there has been an ample history of inadequate and misguided psychiatric treatment of Black patients as well as discrimination against Black psychiatrists.

In again following Dr Poussaint, I have ended up concluding that racism, like other isms, antis, and social phobias, are potentially best categorized as social psychopathologies.⁶ Similarly, in my own Jewish culture that encounters anti-Semitism, some responsibility lies within our culture to address the antisemitism in addition to trying to reduce the external factors.

In our current backlash against antiracism, it behooves psychiatry to once again review and revive the work and advice of Dr Poussaint.

Dr Moffic is an award-winning psychiatrist who specialized in the cultural and ethical aspects of psychiatry and is now in retirement and retirement as a private pro bono community psychiatrist. A prolific writer and speaker, he has done a weekday column titled “Psychiatric Views on the Daily News” and a weekly video, “Psychiatry & Society,” since the COVID-19 pandemic emerged. He was chosen to receive the 2024 Abraham Halpern Humanitarian Award from the American Association for Social Psychiatry. Previously, he received the Administrative Award in 2016 from the American Psychiatric Association, the one-time designation of being a Hero of Public Psychiatry from the Speaker of the Assembly of the APA in 2002, and the Exemplary Psychiatrist Award from the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill in 1991. He presented the third Rabbi Jeffrey B. Stiffman lecture at Congregation Shaare Emeth in St. Louis on Sunday, May 19, 2024. He is an advocate and activist for mental health issues related to climate instability, physician burnout, and xenophobia. He is now editing the final book in a 4-volume series on religions and psychiatry for Springer: Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, Christianity, and now The Eastern Religions, and Spirituality. He serves on the Editorial Board of Psychiatric Times.

References

1. Risen C. Alvin F. Poussaint, 90, dies; saw racism affecting Black mental health. New York Times. February 24, 2025. Accessed February 28, 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/24/us/alvin-poussaint-dead.html

2. Moffic HS, Kendrick EA, Reid K, Lomax JW. Cultural psychiatry education during psychiatric residency. J Psychiatric Education. 1988;12:90-101.

3. Poussaint AF. Why Blacks Kill Blacks. Emerson Hall Publishers, Inc; 1972.

4. Comer JP, Poussaint AF. Black Child Care: How to Bring Up a Healthy Black Child in America: A Guide to Emotional and Psychological Development. Simon and Shuster; 1975.

5. Poussaint A. Is extreme racism a mental illness? Clinical Psychiatry News. July 16, 2015. Accessed February 28, 2025. https://www.mdedge.com/clinicalpsychiatrynews/article/101285/schizophrenia-other-psychotic-disorders/extreme-racism-mental

6. Moffic HS. The case for a social classification of social psychopathologies. Psychiatric Times. February 2, 2024. https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/the-case-for-a-social-classification-of-social-psychopathologies