2022 Cato T. Laurencin MD, Ph.D. Lifetime research winner
The researcher, Dr. Ezra Griffith, given at the July 30 NMA meeting by the W. Montague Cobb Institute with Cato T. Laurencin MD, Ph.D. Lifetime Research Award.
– Randall C. Morgan Jr., MD, MBA- President & CEO, Cobb Institute
WASHINGTON, DC, USA, Aug. 15, 2022 /EINPresswire.com/ — At the Opening Ceremony and Awards Program on July 30, 2022, the W. Montague Cobb/NMA Health Institute recognized a stellar individual with its highest annual research award. Dr. Ezra Griffith was the recipient of the Kato T. Laurencin MD, Ph.D. Lifetime Research Award.
Dr. Ezra Griffith is professor emeritus of psychiatry and African American studies at Yale University. He was born in Barbados and received his undergraduate education at Harvard University and his medical education in France at the University of Strasbourg. He is currently a monthly columnist for the American Psychiatric Association’s Psychiatric News.
In 2001, the Morehouse School of Medicine awarded him an honorary Doctor of Science degree. He was on the faculty at Yale School of Medicine from 1977 to 2016. He also taught black narrative in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Griffith is a former president of Black Psychiatry
of America, the American Orthopsychiatric Association, and the American Academy of Psychiatry and Law.
He has a significant history of administrative leadership in health care settings. From 1989 to 1996 he was Director of the Connecticut Mental Health Center, a collaborative effort of the Yale School of Medicine and the Connecticut Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services. He was Vice Chair for Clinical Affairs in the Yale Department of Psychiatry (1996–2009) and its Vice Chair for Diversity and Organizational Ethics (2009–16).
One of the main academic interests of Dr. Griffith over the years has been cultural and cross-cultural psychiatry. A measure of his stature in this field is reflected in his being Chairman of the Committee on Cultural Psychiatry of the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry (GAP). His GAP Committee publication on suicide among ethnic groups in the United States has received considerable praise and recognition, as has a co-authored review on trends in black homicide and suicide. Dr. Griffith has contributed several groundbreaking articles to the literature that have analyzed the psychological aspects of religious ritual in black churches, both in the United States and the English-speaking Caribbean. In the United States, the work of Dr. Griffith’s work on the Black church was unusual and represented an important beginning in an understudied area. Surprisingly, until recently, few psychiatrists have been interested in the intriguing healing dimension of the black church. His work in the Caribbean led to the book Ye Shall Dream (University of the West Indies Press, 2010), about the Spiritual Baptist religious movement in Barbados.
The interest of Dr. Griffith in Caribbean psychiatric practice has not been merely a theoretical interest. He has consulted with the governments of St. Kitts and Grenada and has been a consultant to the Pan American Health Organization in Antigua and Jamaica. He served as an advisor to Project Hope as they designed psychiatric services for the people of Grenada. Such activity reflects Griffith’s serious interest in Caribbean psychiatry. Dr. Griffith has served as an External Examiner in the Faculty of Medicine of the University of the West Indies. He delivered the first annual Dr. George Mahy in Barbados in 2021.
The field of forensic psychiatry has been a second important interest of Dr. Griffith. He has served on the Council on Law and Psychiatry of the American Psychiatric Association and chaired their Ethics Committee. He is the author of several leading articles in the field and has recently written on narrative in forensic psychiatry and the forensic report as performative narrative, as well as on issues of ethics. Dr. Griffith served for 20 years as editor of the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law. He was also the president of that association. The American Academy of Psychiatry and Law nominated him in 2005 for their Seymour Pollack Award in recognition of his outstanding contributions to forensic psychiatry. In 2010, the American Psychiatric Association awarded him the Isaac Ray Award for Outstanding Achievement in Forensic Psychiatry. He is the editor of Ethical Challenges in Forensic Psychiatry and
The Practice of Psychology (Columbia University Press, 2018).
Dr. Griffith has recently written on ethics and issues of diversity, inclusion and belonging. He has proposed human dignity as a significant factor in making social spaces more therapeutic. He is the author of Race and Excellence: My Dialogue with Chester Pierce (University of Iowa Press, 1998) and Belonging, Therapeutic Landscapes, and Networks (Routledge, 2018). He is co-editor of Black Mental Health (American Psychiatric Publishing, 2019). Race and Excellence is being republished in 2022 by American Psychiatric Press. In May 2007, a special presidential commendation from American Psychiatry
The fellowship was awarded to him in recognition of his strong commitment to the well-being of African-American patients and his outstanding contributions to the fields of cross-cultural psychiatry, forensic psychiatry, and African-American studies.
He has been the Mossell Lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania, the Dana African American Visiting Professor at the University of Maryland, the Earline Houston Memorial Lecturer in Public Psychiatry at Hahnemann University, as well as the Jeanne Spurlock Memorial Lecturer at the George Washington
University School of Medicine. In 1997, he presented the Lundbeck Lecture at the Forensic Psychiatry Section of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in the UK. In 1999 he delivered the Roy Cooke Memorial Lecture in Kingston, Jamaica. Dr. Griffith presented the Solomon Carter Fuller Lecture at the American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting in May 2001. He was Ernest Y. Williams, MD 1998, National Medical Association Senior Clinical Scholar. He was Visiting Professor of Psychiatry and Law at the University of Rochester in 2012.
From 2013 to 2015, he served as a gubernatorial appointee to the Sandy Hook Commission that investigated the Sandy Hook school violence. He received the American Psychiatric Association’s Distinguished Service Award in 2021.
Winston Price, MD- CTIO
W. Montague Cobb/NMA Health Institute
wprice@thecobbinstitute.org
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