A Call to Action on Racism and Social Justice in Mental Health

We write as academics who study the impact of culture on mental health, clinicians who strive to provide equitable mental health care and representatives of organizations devoted to advancing the field of cultural psychiatry. We join our voices to those in the USA and around the world calling for social change to address the longstanding violence and inequities of systemic racism and discrimination. As mental health practitioners, we see up close the devastating personal consequences of racism and discrimination on those viewed as other and dehumanized. Beyond the shocking examples of murderous hatred, crushing the breath of Black individuals or hunting them in the streets, there are persistent and pervasive inequities in society that result in members of the dominant group receiving daily benefits while others—people of colour, racialized minorities, people with diverse gender or sexual orientations, languages or religions—are disqualified, silenced and attacked or else rendered invisible in the name of an illusory equality.