Psychiatrist Focused on Mental Health Effects of Racism
A smart, hard-working student, he could have quietly earned his M.D. degree to counsel individual patients and consider himself successful by measuring his fees earned and number of patients no longer needing mental health medication. But he chose to publicly express his concerns about the mental health effects of racism / discrimination in society. Not everyone was receptive to his message.
FAMILY BACKGROUND
Alvin F. Poussaint (AP) was born in the East Harlem section of New York City, one of eight children. His father was a printer. His mother was a homemaker.
EDUCATION
Following high school graduation, AP earned his Bachelors of Science degree from Columbia University, followed by his medical degree from Cornell University. He completed his medical residency at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he also received a Master’s degree in pharmacology.
CAREER CHOICE
AP described himself as a studious, conscientious child, very much in contrast to his brother, with whom he shared a bedroom through their high school years. As a teenager, AP’s brother suffered from mental health issues and drug addiction, engaging in petty theft to support his habit. (He died of meningitis at an early age.)
Eventually, AP concluded that his brother’s downward mental piral was due in equal parts to his brother’s lack of personal discipline but also to society’s racist pressures on young Black men.
CAREER FOCUS – RACISM
Dictionary definition of ‘Racism’ – Prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism by an individual, community or institution against a person or people based on their membership in a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority.
(Very) Brief background of racism in America: The earliest race-related conflicts in America involved American Indians and American settlers claiming ownership of the same disputed land.
Conflicts between different religion-affiliated groups of immigrants (for example: between Protestants from Germany and Catholics from Ireland) preceded later conflicts based on different skin colors.
Racially based conflicts between African Americans and White Americans took place before the American Civil War of the 1860s, often in the form of slave revolts. Tensions continued after the war, including efforts to suppress Black voting and enacting “Jim Crow” laws (enacted by many states within the former Confederacy and in some others, to legalize continued discrimination based on race; for example, requiring a level of literacy to vote; also mandating ‘separate but equal” public education facilities (which were far from equal).
White American mobs frequently targeted Asian immigrants during the 19th and 20th centuries.
Adopting a career focus: While studying for his master’s degree during the early 1960s. AP grew convinced that racism was causing a mental health crisis for Black Americans. At the invitation of the civil rights leader Bob Moses, AP moved to Jackson, Miss., where he became the Southern field director of the Medical Committee for Human Rights, a group that pushed to desegregate medical facilities and provided health care and training for civil rights workers.
He participated in the 1965 Selma to Montgomery (Alabama) march (famously led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr), carrying a briefcase full of medical supplies – more than a doctor normally might, assuming that few White people would offer to help.
AP joined the faculty at Tufts University School of Medicine, in Boston, Mass., in 1967, moving to Harvard in 1969, where he was the founding director of the school’s Office of Recruitment and Multi-cultural Affairs.
AUTHOR AND CONSULTANT
AP first came to public notoriety in the late 1970s, as the energy and optimism of the ‘Civil Rights Movement’ were giving way to White backlash and a skepticism about the possibility of Black progress in a White-dominated society.
In books like “Why Blacks Kill Blacks” and “Black Child Care” AP ‘walked the line’ between those on the political left who blamed persistent racism for the ills confronting Black America and those on the political right who said that, after the ‘Civil Rights Era,’ it was up to Black people to take responsibility for their own lives.
Through extensive statistical research and jargon-free prose, AP recognized the continued impact of systemic racism while also calling for Black Americans to embrace personal responsibility and traditional family structures. That balanced position made AP a force in Black politics and culture, leading to his service within (Black) Reverend Jesse Jackson’s 1984 presidential campaign and reportedly, the model for Dr. Cliff Huxtable on Bill Cosby’s tv sit-come, “The Cosby Show.”
AP denied being Cosby’s inspiration, but he was certainly a guiding light while reading almost every script as a consultant for the tv show, often sending notes about how to avoid stereotypes.
Commenting on another sitcom, “Family Matters,” centered on a Black family featuring a brainy, goofy teenager, AP said, “The fact that the teenager is a nerd and very bright may be a step forward, accepting that a Black kid can be bright and precocious and might end up in an Ivy League school.”
With journalist Amy Alexander, AP wrote “Lay My Burden Down: Suicide and the Mental Health Crisis Among African Americans” and during the 2000s, he took multiple tours around the country with Mr. Cosby, interviewing Black men and their families.
Concluded AP, “I think a lot of these males kind of have a father hunger and actually grieve that they don’t have a father. And I think later a lot of that turns into anger: ‘Why aren’t you with me? Why don’t you care about me?’ ”
By then, AP was addressing a new generation of Black Americans – not the one that had taken lessons from “The Cosby Show” and some found his message simplistic. He also drew criticism for arguing that racism was partly a mental disorder.
“It’s time for the American Psychiatric Association to designate extreme racism as a mental health problem,” wrote AP in an article published by The New York Times in 1999. “Otherwise, racists will continue to fall through the cracks of the mental health system, and we can expect more of them to act out their deadly delusions.”
Critics said AP’s position on designating racism as a mental health problem risked absolving racists and misdiagnosing the systemic nature of racism in American society. But AP continued to find a receptive audience among those who understood the balance he was trying to strike between recognizing racism and not allowing it to be an excuse for what he saw as nihilism (the rejection of all religious and moral principles, in the belief that life is meaningless) and irresponsibility.
CAREER SATISFACTION
Through his published books, tv show consulting and earlier support of the Civil Rights Movement, AP became a force in Black politics and culture.
“I always wonder, whenever I talk to Dr. Poussaint, why he isn’t better known,” said Bob Herbert, a columnist for The New York Times in 2007. “He’s one of the smartest individuals in the country on issues of race, class and justice.”
Less well known was the positive effect of AP’s private, confidential counseling with many individual Black males to help them cope with their negative thinking while living in a long-established, extensive – though fortunately not universal – racist society.
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This career story is based on multiple sources, including an obituary written by Clay Risen, published by The New York Times on February 26, 2025 plus internet research, including Wikipedia.
