Town Hall to Report on Progress of APA’s Task Force on Structural Racism

Please join us for the fifth town hall of APA’s Presidential Task Force to Address Structural Racism Throughout Psychiatry, to be held during APA’s online 2021 Annual Meeting. It will be led by Task Force Chair Cheryl D. Wills, M.D., and the presenters are one of the authors of this article, Michele Reid, M.D.; Renee Leslie Binder, M.D.; and Charles Dike, M.D.

Recent events have brought the inequities in American society into clear and vibrant focus as it became apparent how racism, race, and ethnicity literally determined life and death for far too many People of Color. The COVID-19 pandemic has shined a bright light on societal biases as a disproportionate number of Blacks, Indigenous, and People of Color died from the virus. Additionally, the deaths of Black people at the hands of vigilantes and law enforcement agents brought people into the streets to protest inequities, injustice, and racism in all aspects of life in America.

These events, as a result, have forced widespread institutional introspection as organizations are forced to examine their own biases and inequities. The invisibility of institutional injustices and inequalities does not mean they do not exist. The way things have been done in the past can no longer be tolerated. As clinicians, each day we face these issues in small and large ways in our own lives and our profession.

APA is uniquely positioned to address racism by critically examining the impact of racism on mental health and our profession and embark on a course of action that responds to the needs of our members, the people we serve, and the public. The task force’s work is a step forward in examining the impact of structural racism in psychiatry. APA can lead the way in making comprehensive and permanent changes in our institutions, organizations, and profession.

Over the past year, the task force has worked with the APA Board of Trustees, the Assembly, councils and other components, members, and district branches to develop and promote guidelines, podcasts, webinars, articles, and books that can be used as valuable resources for planning and implementing initiatives at the local level. Attendees will be informed about these resources, as well as task force recommendations that have been approved by the Board of Trustees and progress on their implementation.

There will also be discussion of structural racism’s current impact on the mental health of patients and colleagues and the achievable and actionable recommendations for change to eliminate structural racism in APA and psychiatry now and prevent it in the future. ■