As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to reveal the significant racial disparities that exist in health care access and treatment across the United States, Mount Sinai’s neuroscience community is additionally exploring the profound connections between racism and mental health through a new seminar series.
The first seminar, “The Impact of Racism on Mental Health,” held virtually on Monday, January 25, featured two guest speakers, and drew nearly 500 members of the general public, and researchers and students from 35 universities across eight nations. It was sponsored by The Friedman Brain Institute, as part of its Diversity in Neuroscience initiative known as #DiverseBrains, and the Mount Sinai Office for Diversity and Inclusion. The seminars aim to raise awareness and address the inequities—and amplify the work of researchers studying the various effects of racism on minds and bodies.
The seminar was organized and moderated by Aya Osman, PhD, a third-year postdoctoral fellow at the Seaver Autism Center for Research and Treatment. Dr. Osman is studying the role of the gut microbiome in various neuropsychiatric disorders, including autism and addiction, in the lab of Drew Kiraly, MD, PhD. It was co-moderated by Joseph Simon, a fourth-year PhD neuroscience student studying social influences on decision-making in the laboratory of Erin Rich, MD, PhD, in the Nash Family Department of Neuroscience.
Participants included, clockwise from top left: co-moderator Joseph Simon; speaker Tanja Jovanovic, PhD; Aya Osman, PhD, event organizer and moderator; and speaker Monnica Williams, PhD, ABPP.
The aim of the seminars, said Dr. Osman, is to make research findings more accessible to the public and to increase scientific collaboration with researchers studying similar topics. “We hope this lecture series will open our eyes to the ways racism can be perpetuated and spark dialogue around dismantling structural racism in the mental health field and discuss ways to heal from its impact,” Dr. Osman said.
Eric J. Nestler, MD, PhD, Nash Family Professor of Neuroscience, Director of The Friedman Brain Institute, and Dean for Academic and Scientific Affairs at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, welcomed the participants. “We launched #DiverseBrains about five and a half years ago to promote diversity and inclusion, and to create an optimal climate throughout The Friedman Brain Institute,” said Dr. Nestler. “And no conversation is more at the heart of our original goals than today’s topic.”
Invited speaker Monnica Williams, PhD, ABPP, Associate Professor, School of Psychology, University of Ottawa, and Canada Research Chair for Mental Health Disparities, gave a presentation on “Racial Trauma and New Directions in Healing,” which drew from existing research data. “We know there are profound connections between racism and mental health,” said Dr. Williams. “We have research over the past 20 years that shows definitive links to just about every major mental illness to experiences of racism and discrimination,” she said, citing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), stress, anxiety, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, substance and alcohol abuse, eating disorders, severe psychological distress, psychosis, disability, and suicide.
Dr. Williams also discussed the growing use of medical psychedelics and the research that shows it may hold promise in helping to decrease the negative impact of racial trauma in minority populations. However, she pointed out that her own research has uncovered that minorities are greatly underrepresented in psychedelic medicine studies, with 82.3 percent of the people involved in these studies, as both patients and researchers, being white. “We can now make a strong case that future clinical trials need to examine the efficacy of psychedelics as an adjunct to psychotherapy for individuals with race-based trauma,” Dr. Williams said.
Speaker Tanja Jovanovic, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences, and the David and Patricia Barron Chair for PTSD Neurobiology at Wayne State University in Detroit, addressed the topic of “The Biological Impacts of Racism—Implications for Negative Health Outcomes.” Dr. Jovanovic’s research focuses on the interaction of traumatic experiences, neurophysiology, neuroendocrinology, and genetics in stress-related disorders in adults and children in high-risk populations. In her seminar presentation, she examined racial differences related to neurobiology and how the stressors of racism affect the brain.
“Racism impacts biology and should be treated as an illness,” she said. Dr. Jovanovic presented research showing the biological effects in those experiencing the chronic stress of racial discrimination. Altered physiological measures include higher levels of cell-free mitochondrial DNA, a biomarker associated with stress, aging, inflammatory processes, and cell death. Further, her research shows that racial discrimination may alter the automatic nervous system by increasing the activity of the sympathetic nervous system (increasing startle response, accelerating heart rate, constricting blood vessels, and raising blood pressure), and decreasing the peripheral nervous system, or vagal tone, which is associated with rest and regulation of stress responses.
The Mount Sinai Health System has an ongoing commitment to accelerate efforts to dismantle racism and advance equity through priorities established by the Office for Diversity and Inclusion. The BioMedical Laureates Program, for example, is one of the first in the nation to recruit underrepresented candidates and enhance diversity among senior research faculty. It includes an initiative to recruit and mentor Junior Laureates, those just starting their postdoctoral fellowships. Forming the foundation for these and future efforts is the Mount Sinai Health System Task Force to Address Racism, which was established to make Mount Sinai an anti-racist health care and learning institution that intentionally addresses structural racism.
Participants agreed that much work—at many levels—needs to be done on racism and research. Dr. Osman cited a need for an increase in Black faculty, and diversity training among principal investigators. Said Mr. Simon: “We must continue this dialogue in many different forms, and it’s important that we make this information and this outreach understandable for all.”
Indeed, educating the public is a key component of this effort, said Dr. Osman, who cites a need for solid, clear, science-based information that is understandable by the general public, which is driving her extensive public outreach through social and mass media. As this seminar series continues to invite speakers and discuss this topic, an additional goal is to explore grants that would fund further research into the impact of racism on health, and ways to eradicate it. The second seminar is planned for early spring 2021.