Racial Equity in Psychiatry and Mental Health – Jessica Isom, MD, MPH

Episode 53
Guest: Jessica Isom, MD, MPH
Host: Shimon Cohen, LCSW

Dr. Jessica Isom, a board-certified community psychiatrist and clinical instructor at Yale University, shares her work advancing racial equity in medicine and mental health through clinical care, education, and consulting. She discusses how racism—not race—is the true risk factor for poor health outcomes, and how pathologizing Blackness in medical and psychiatric frameworks causes real harm. Dr. Isom explores how whiteness and Eurocentric standards shape mental health systems, including the DSM, and offers insight into practicing with a lens grounded in equity, Black healing, and joy. This conversation challenges deficit-based approaches and calls for systemic transformation in health care.

In this episode:

• How racism—not race—is the root risk factor for poor health outcomes
• How pathologizing Blackness causes harm and perpetuates racist health narratives
• How whiteness and Eurocentricity show up in mental health systems, including the DSM
• Deficit-based ideology and why it fails Black communities
• Black healing, joy, and what equity-centered clinical practice looks like

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Music credit
"District Four" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
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