Martin Luther King Jr, Mental Health, and Reducing Racism

Psychiatry & Society

This video series is taking a short break while Dr Moffic travels. For now, enjoy the rerun of this video with updated commentary.

We just passed Martin Luther King, Jr. Day for 2024. Of course, he was at the center of a past March on Washington when he gave his “I Have a Dream" speech. Certainly, we in psychiatry have much more to do to reduce racism at all levels.

After the October 7th invasion of Israel, we had a Solidarity March on Washington where an estimated 300,000 individuals attended.
King was a great friend of American Jews and there was a time where a Jewish/Black tradition accomplished much. May that be revived again as racism and anti-Semitism, let alone Islamophobia and others, are still at large as societal psychopathologies.

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 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.