As Black History Month draws to a close, psychiatrists and other behavioral health clinicians can learn about the mental health disparities facing the Black community in a series of free webinars from the American Psychiatric Association and Morehouse School of Medicine African American Behavioral Health - Center of Excellence.

The African American Behavioral Health – Center of Excellence and APA launched the Striving for Excellence series last year. Each hour-long webinar is available in APA’s Learning Center and each offers CME credit. Among the topics covered:

• Returning Race to the Clinical Dialogue: Maximizing use of Ethnoracial Demographics in Clinical Care, presented by Constance E. Dunlap, M.D., DFAPA. The webinar is a discussion of the contemporary use of demographics such as race and ethnicity in clinical care, and the pros and cons of that usage. Participants will hear about the skills necessary to appropriately include ethnoracial demographics in a manner that deepens clinical understanding and fosters better clinical care.
• Black Mental Health During the COVID-19 Pandemic—What Does the Data Say? This webinar provides an epidemiological and sociological overview of adverse mental health and substance use amid the COVID-19 pandemic among Black Americans. Rashon Lane, Ph.D., from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention highlights recent studies that describe the state of mental health during the pandemic. She also describes the social and structural factors that exacerbate mental health concerns for Black individuals during the pandemic.
• Challenging Racial Violence in Mental Health Encounters, with Karina España, M.D., Paul Maitland-McKinley, M.D., M.P.H., and Davíd Nagarkatti-Gude, M.D., Ph.D., looks at specific examples of how racial disparities and racialized violence can manifest while delivering mental health care. Participants will learn about tools that can assist in enhancing the precarious yet essential work of implementing antiracist practices in the workplace.
• From Drapetomania to Schizophrenia: Systemic Racism, Psychiatry, and Potential Solutions, presented by Danielle Hairston, M.D., the chair of APA’s Caucus of Black Psychiatrists, covers inequities and multi-level racism that continue to impact the mental health of Black Americans and other people of color. Grounded in principles of race equity and social justice, the webinar addresses the role of power and privilege in perpetuating mental health inequities. This course aims to identify the focus of institutional-level interventions that would be expected to improve racial inequities in psychiatric care. The need for changing traditional structures and culture to those that promote racial equity will be a focus of this discussion.

Learn more about the Striving for Excellence webinar series. Funding for the Striving for Excellence Series was made possible by Grant No. H79FG000591 from SAMHSA of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The contents are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement, by SAMHSA/HHS, or the U.S. Government.