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Psychiatrists Have Taken 170 Years to Apologize for History of Racism
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• Rev. Fred Shaw, Anti-Racism Task Force Leader, Joins Calls for APA President and Columbia University Psychiatrist Jeffrey Lieberman to Resign All Advisory and Executive Positions in Light of Blatant Racist Tweet.
• Lieberman has a controversial past, including being irrationally critical of anyone opposing his or psychiatry’s works—making accusations of the type that are now being similarly directed at him, but with merit.
• The Columbia Vagelos College of Physicians & Surgeons wrote to leaders at four institutions affiliated with Lieberman questioning if New York Presbyterian Hospital is safe for students and patients of color.
• Rev. Shaw states, “As an African American and human rights advocate, I am appalled that Ms. Gatwech was subject to this racial abuse,” Rev. Shaw calls for Lieberman’s resignation from all executive and advisory positions he holds internationally, including with pharmaceutical companies.
By CCHR International
Mental Health Industry Watchdog
February 25, 2022
Former American
Psychiatric Association president Jeffrey Lieberman, Chair of the Columbia
University Department of Psychiatry, has been suspended after issuing a racist
post on his Twitter account about a dark-skinned model, Ms. Nyakim Gatwech.
He was subsequently
removed from his position as psychiatrist-in-chief at Columbia University
Irving Medical Center/New York-Presbyterian Hospital and forced to resigned
from his role as executive director of the New York State Psychiatric
Institute.[1] However, Rev. Frederick Shaw, president of the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People Inglewood South Bay branch and founder of
the Task Force Against Racism and
Modern-Day Eugenics, said Lieberman’s subsequent trite apology to
Ms. Gatwech, was grossly inadequate for someone of his stature in psychiatry.
“Jeffrey Lieberman’s apology to the model, Ms.
Nyakim Gatwech, was trite and grossly inadequate for someone of his stature in
psychiatry. As an African American and human rights advocate, I am
appalled that Ms. Gatwech was subject to this racial abuse.” – Rev. Frederick Shaw, founder of CCHR’s
Task Force Against Racism and Modern-Day Eugenics
“As an African American
and human rights advocate, I am appalled that Ms. Gatwech was subject to this
racial abuse,” Rev. Shaw said.
He called for
Lieberman’s resignation from all executive and advisory positions he holds
internationally, including with pharmaceutical companies—from the U.S. to
Spain.
Lieberman tweeted in
response to a photo of Ms. Gatwech, an American model of South Sudanese
descent, that her skin color was possibly a “freak of nature.”
In an email to his
colleagues before he was suspended, Lieberman apologized for the tweet,
describing it as “racist and sexist.” He added that he was “deeply ashamed” of
his “prejudices and stereotypical assumptions.”[2]
But Rev Shaw said the
apology was “public relations rhetoric. This is no light-weight psychiatrist,
he’s the former head of the American Psychiatric Association, and has been a
researcher for the National Institute of Mental Health and served on its
National Advisory Mental Health Council; he also served on the advisory board
of the Food and Drug Administration advisory committee for Neuropharmacologic
and Psychopharmacologic Drugs and has been on the editorial boards of numerous
journals. We shall approach all of them to have Dr. Lieberman be removed as an
expert and denied future official affiliations.”[3]
The New York state
Office of Mental Health, which operates the New York State Psychiatric
Institute, asked Lieberman to resign as director, stating: “The Office of Mental Health took immediate action after learning
of Dr. Lieberman’s offensive and inappropriate comments on social media. As of
February 22, he is no longer affiliated with OMH or the State of New York,”
said agency spokesperson Jessica Zahn.[4]
The government-funded position
with the New York State Psychiatric Institute paid Lieberman almost $250,000
annually in 2020 and 2021, according to payroll records.[5]
“To not understand how racist language like
that is harmful when your profession is supposed to care for the mental health
of people makes you unqualified to be a psychiatrist at all, let alone the
chief of the top program.” – Dr. Elle Lett, a postdoctoral fellow in medicine at the
University of Pennsylvania[6]
“This man held the sentiments
that shaped the department. This is a reckoning for institutional change,” Lett
told THE CITY. “I don’t trust him or the people he trained of being stewards of
mental health to Black women.[7]
“Jeffrey Lieberman’s comment is not surprising
given psychiatry’s long history of fueling racism and harming African Americans
and minorities.” – Rev.
Frederick Shaw
In April 2021, the APA
issued a formal apology over what it called psychiatry’s “role in perpetrating
structural racism” and “history of actions…that hurt Black, Indigenous, and
People of Color” (BIPOC).[8] It took them over 170 years to
apologize, which the Task Force rejected. APA’s response to Lieberman’s
comment was unremarkable and self-serving. Its Board of Trustees issued a
statement, saying it “reiterates its position that both racism and sexism harm
the APA as an organization, the field of psychiatry, and the people and
communities we serve. Past APA presidents do not speak for, or on behalf of,
the APA.”[9]
Rev. Shaw says the APA
needs to take a much stronger stand—removing Lieberman’s past presidential
title and issuing other sanctions.
Lieberman’s post, with a
photo of Ms. Gatwech, was not only racist but also sexist. “It is not a work of
art made of black stone or granite,” read the original tweet, published by a
user with the handle @zg4ever. Further, he wrote that Gatwech “is in the
Guinness Book of World Records for the darkest skin on Earth. But in 2020,
Guinness tweeted and clarified that it does not monitor skin tone.” [10]
Rev. Shaw, also a
spokesperson for the mental health watchdog Citizens Commission on Human Rights
International, which helped found the Task Force Against Racism and Modern-Day
Eugenics, notes examples of psychiatry’s racist history:
- In 1792 Benjamin Rush, the
“father of American psychiatry,” declared that African American’s skin
color derived from a “disease” called Negritude, which he theorized was a
form of leprosy. The “cure” was when their skin turned “white.”[11]
- In the 1950s U.S. psychiatrist
J.C. Carothers argued that in many ways the African resembles a European
8- or 9-year-old child in his reaction to the environment. He compared
Africans to a “leucotomized European.”[12]
- 1960s: Psychiatrists
claimed civil rights protests caused violent “schizophrenic” symptoms in
“Negro populations,” calling this “protest psychosis.” African American
men were said to have developed “hostile and aggressive feelings” and
“delusional anti-whiteness after listening to civil rights leaders.” Ads for antipsychotics used African symbols to
reflect so-called “violent traits” in Blacks.[13]
- 1990s: NIMH Director,
psychiatrist Frederick Goodwin, compared Black youth to “hyperaggressive”
and “hypersexual” monkeys in a jungle who only want to kill one another,
have sex and reproduce. He was forced to resign. He helped developed
a “Violence Initiative” program to look for a “violent” gene in African
Americans and Hispanics that could be controlled by psychiatric drugs,
including the antidepressant Prozac—known to cause violent and suicidal
behavior.[14]
- 1990s: As reported by The Black Chronicle,
The New York State Psychiatric Institute has its own history of racial
discrimination and questionable practices. The facility came under fire in
1998 after news broke of research involving Black and Latino children
targeted to test a theory about criminal or violent behavior and given a
drug that was later pulled from the market. According to The New York Times, the researchers targeted boys
6-10 who were the younger brothers of people labeled at the time as
“delinquents.”
Shaw rejected
explanations for Lieberman’s behavior, including Robert Klitzman, a professor
of psychiatry at Columbia, who described the episode as “unfortunate” and said
it “really highlights how deep and pervasive some of our own unconscious biases can be.”[15] “I don’t believe this was some
‘unconscious’ bias,” Shaw said. “You could never excuse slave owners’ brutality
by saying they were ‘unconsciously’ indoctrinated in the fraudulent idea that
Africans were genetically inferior to white humans, justifying their
enslavement.”
Comments from others
include:
- “We condemn the racism and
sexism reflected in Dr. Lieberman’s tweet and acknowledge and share the
hurt, sadness, confusion, and distressing emotions you may be feeling,”
Thomas Smith, the new acting director of the New York Psychiatric
Institute and other leaders said in an email to staff. [16]
- “It’s unconscionable that anyone would
post that anywhere—it is nothing but hurtful and propagates racism. That
it was a psychiatrist in such a position of power and authority makes it
that much worse. An apology is no longer enough—that is just words.” – Dr. Daniel Block, psychiatrist[17]
- A dozen doctors called the
Coalition of Concerned Analysts of Color at Columbia sent a mass email to
the psychiatric department demanding Lieberman’s resignation, condemning
his beliefs and stating: “We do not support such views and condemn these
beliefs and actions. Nor do we support a department that continues to
employ anyone holding them….”[18]
- The Columbia Vagelos College of
Physicians & Surgeons wrote to leaders at four institutions affiliated
with Lieberman questioning if New York Presbyterian Hospital is safe for
students and patients of color.[19]
Lieberman’s Past Comments:
“self-promotional and condescending” ….
Lieberman has a
controversial past, including being irrationally critical of anyone opposing
his or psychiatry’s works—making accusations of the type that are now being
similarly directed at him, but with merit.
- In 2013, Lieberman was APA
president when the organization’s Diagnostic &
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) was released, garnering international
criticism from mental health professionals with threats to boycott its
use. Lieberman told Psychiatric News that
he’d hired a public relations firm to address psychiatrists being
“stigmatized” in the wake of this outcry over the manual.
- “Psychiatry remains blind to the fact
that it is its own spurious pathologizing of its clients that creates the
stigma. It has no interest in genuine reform, but instead is embarked
on a tawdry PR campaign to whitewash its transgressions and sell its
concepts to the media, stakeholders, and the general public.” – Psychologist Philip Hickey, Ph.D.[20]
- “Tawdry PR explains both his
comments at that time and today,” Rev. Shaw opined. Lieberman justified
the DSM-5, stating “…it represents a system that
is as good as we can have, given our current state of knowledge”
and psychiatry has “no better alternative.”[21]
- Judy Stone, writing in
Scientific American, commented on Lieberman’s criticism of those
expressing disfavor toward DSM-5. She called his views “self-promotional
and condescending,” adding that he “stoops to disparaging
characterizations of critics…” Dr. Stone quipped: “…it makes me wonder if
there is a DSM-5 diagnosis for someone who is self-serving, can’t accept
criticism, and believes critics are prejudiced bigots?”[22]
- Further, Dr. Stone wrote: “I
was very disappointed to see Dr. Lieberman’s shallow, self-serving and
evidence-free diatribe appear in Scientific American as
a guest opinion. He failed to reveal important conflicts of interest. He
made serious claims for which he presented no evidence. He has made thinly
veiled personal attacks on his critics, without offering anything
substantive to counter rationally.”
- With Frederick Goodwin
targeting African American children targeted to be drugged with Prozac in
the late eighties to “curb” their supposed “violence,”, it is notable that
in 1991, Lieberman was a member of the FDA’s Pharmacologic Drugs Advisory
Board, which met to hear evidence that Prozac could cause violent and
suicidal behavior. At the time, Lieberman had financial ties to
antidepressant makers.[23] Despite damning evidence, the
committee refused to support a warning that Prozac or antidepressants
could cause violent/suicidal behavior. (Since then, dozens of school
shootings have been linked to teens taking antidepressants documented to
cause hostility.)
- In 1997, Lieberman helped with
the formation of the International Early Psychosis Association, along with
Australian psychiatrist, Patrick McGorry. Between 2002 and 2010, Lieberman
was Vice President for the group’s North America sector and in 2014, was Vice
President for the entire group. McGorry came under criticism for promoting
the theory of “Psychosis-Risk Syndrome” for which individuals from age 14
could be arbitrarily determined to be at risk or developing psychosis and
drugged with antipsychotics before the
onset of psychosis to “prevent” it. The problem was that the “diagnosis”
had a more than 80% false positive rate and psychosis is a side effect of
antipsychotics.[24] Lieberman and McGorry are on
the Editorial Board of The World Journal of
Biological Psychiatry—a position Lieberman should resign from.
- In 2003, in response to British
regulators warning doctors not to prescribe antidepressants to those aged
18 and younger because of the risk of suicide, Lieberman told The New York Times, ‘‘I think they’re really
overreacting. This is really going way too far, and in the process doing
more harm than good.’’[25] However, in 2004, the FDA also
found that antidepressant use in youngsters and young adults could cause
suicidal behavior. It then mandated manufacturers to place a black box
notice on drug packaging, warning of the risk of suicide. After the FDA
issued the warning, Lieberman’s rhetoric changed, now claiming there
“wasn’t sufficient evidence to support a link between these drugs and
suicide,” in 1991.[26]
One former trainee of
Lieberman told THE CITY in the wake of his
current racist comments that no one was “surprised” by his remarks:
“Everyone had a very low
opinion of him [Lieberman] but no one says or does anything about it.” He was
very powerful, that “If you write a grant, he has to write the letter of
support.” – Former trainee of Lieberman[27]
Rev. Shaw adds: “This is
the character of the man who now—in response to his racist comments said: ‘An
apology from me to the Black community, to women, and to all of you is not
enough. I’ve hurt many, and I am beginning to understand the work ahead to make
needed personal changes and over time to regain your trust.’”[28]
Rev. Shaw called the
apology self-serving and reiterated that Lieberman should be denounced
internationally and any pharmaceutical company affiliations should remove him
as a speaker, consultant, advisory board member or researcher. In December
2020, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company in Spain, announced
collaboration with Lieberman and other researchers from Columbia University
that the Task Force will seek revocation of the relationship.[29]
Rev. Shaw’s Task Force
will write to government agencies and private companies and organizations to
ask them to remove Lieberman as one of their experts and will also contact
psychiatric agencies or groups planning on having him as a speaker.[30]
The Task Force Against
Racism and Modern-Day Eugenics comprises over 100 African American community
members that want to see racism eliminated from the mental health field and
greater accountability instituted in the psychiatric industry for racist and
harmful treatment of minorities.
References:
[1] Lola
Fadulu, “Columbia Psychiatry Chair Suspended After Tweet About Dark-Skinned
Model: The post from Jeffrey Lieberman, which described the model as possibly a
‘freak of nature,’ drew negative attention from medical professionals,” The New York Times, 23 Feb 2022, Updated 24 Feb 2020,
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/23/nyregion/columbia-jeffrey-lieberman.html
[2] Ibid.
[3] “Interview:
In search of the pathophysiology and prevention of schizophrenia,”
Lieberman, Jeffrey
A., Neuropsychiatry; London Vol. 1, Iss. 3, (Jun 2011):
225-231. DOI:10.2217/npy.11.30, https://www.proquest.com/docview/912446471
[4] Josefa
Velasquez “A Racist Tweet by Columbia Psychiatry Chair Ripples Through New
York’s Elite Medical Circles,” The City, 24 Feb.
2022,
https://www.thecity.nyc/2022/2/24/22949146/racist-tweet-columbia-psychiatry-chair-jeffrey-lieberman-new-york-medical-elite
[5] Ibid.
[6] Op. cit., The New York Times
[7] Op cit., The City
[8] https://www.cchrint.org/2021/01/26/american-psychiatric-associations-apology-for-harming-african-americans-rejected/,
citing: Megan Brooks, “APA Apologizes for Past Support of Racism in
Psychiatry,” Medscape, 19 Jan 2019, https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/944352?src=wnl_edit_tpal&uac=345404PY&impID=3143084&faf=1
[9] Anna
Madaris Miller, “Top psychiatrist suspended after tweeting about a Black model,
using the phrase ‘freak of nature,’“ Insider, 24 Feb
2022,
https://www.insider.com/columbia-psychiatrist-jeffrey-lieberman-suspended-tweet-black-model-2022-2
[10] Nick
Mordowanec, “Columbia Psychiatry Chair Suspended After ‘Racist’ Tweet About
Black Model,” Newsweek, 24 Feb. 2022,
https://www.newsweek.com/columbia-psychiatry-chair-deactivates-twitter-account-after-racist-tweet-1681877
[11] https://www.cchrint.org/2021/01/26/american-psychiatric-associations-apology-for-harming-african-americans-rejected/,
citing: Prof. Thomas Szasz, M.D., The Manufacture of Madness: A
Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement,
Jan. 1970, p. 154
[12] https://www.cchrtaskforce.org/articles/mental-health-racism
[13] https://www.cchrint.org/2019/07/17/minority-mental-health-month-may-spell-mental-health-slavery/
citing Jonathan M. Metzl, The Protest Psychosis, How Schizophrenia became a
Black Disease, (Beacon Press, Boston, 2009), pp. xii, xiv, p. 101
[14] https://www.cchrint.org/2020/06/16/naacp-inglewood-executive-educates-about-psychiatric-racism/
citing “U.S. Hasn’t Given Up Linking Genes to Crime,” The New York Times, 18 Sept. 1992, https://www.nytimes.com/1992/09/18/opinion/l-us-hasn-t-given-up-linking-genes-to-crime-153192.html
[15] Op. cit., The New York Times
[16] Ibid.
[17] Ronny
Reyes, “Columbia University psychiatry department chair is suspended after
referring to a dark-skinned model as ‘a freak of nature’” Daily Mail, 24 Feb 2022,
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10548689/Columbia-University-prof-suspended-referring-dark-skinned-model-freak-nature.html
[18] Op. cit., The City
[19] Op. cit., Insider
[20] https://www.cchrint.org/2021/03/08/resource-on-why-psychiatry-is-upset-about-its-failures-and-critics/
[21] https://www.cchrint.org/2021/03/08/resource-on-why-psychiatry-is-upset-about-its-failures-and-critics/,
citing: Michael Vlessides, “The Past, Present, and Future of the DSM,” Medscape, 15 Dec. 2020,
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/942694
[22] https://www.cchrint.org/2021/03/08/resource-on-why-psychiatry-is-upset-about-its-failures-and-critics/,
citing: Judy Stone, “Anti-Psychiatry Prejudice? A response to Dr.
Lieberman,” Scientific American, 24 May 2013,
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/molecules-to-medicine/anti-psychiatry-prejudice-a-response-to-dr-lieberman/
[23] Talking Back to Prozac: What Doctors Aren’t Telling You About
Today’s Most Controversial Drug Mass Market, 1994, pp. 198, 285
[24] Sue
Dunlevy, “US expert slams Patrick McGorry’s psychosis model,” The Australian, 14 June 2011, https://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/us-expert-slams-patrick-mcgorrys-psychosis-model/news-story/17af8dc06430231afbf44bc9df2d38bf
[25] Erica
Goode, “British Warning on Antidepressant Use for Youth,” The New York Times, 11 Dec. 2003,
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/11/world/british-warning-on-antidepressant-use-for-youth.html
[26] http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/963903/posts
[27] Op cit., The City
[28] Olafimihan
Oshin, “Columbia chair suspended after tweet about model of South Sudanese
descent,” The Hill, 23 Feb. 2022, https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/595599-columbia-chair-suspended-after-tweet-about-black-model
[29] https://www.einnews.com/pr_news/532992356/oryzon-launches-pioneering-schizophrenia-precision-medicine-study-in-collaboration-with-columbia-psychiatry
[30] https://www.speakerbookingagency.com/talent/jeffrey-lieberman
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