Dr. Griffith is Professor of Psychiatry and Neurology at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Science (GWU). In the GWU Department of Psychiatry, Dr. Griffith served 17 years as program director of the GWU psychiatry residency program, followed by 10 years as the Leon M. Yochelson Professor and Chair of the GWU Department of Psychiatry. Dr. Griffith’s academic mission has been to teach and mentor psychiatry residents in approaches to mental health services that could be effective and usable worldwide, across gaps in culture, language, and socioeconomic status and despite histories of social exclusion and injustices. This mission has guided his scholarship and has led to an innovative, culturally focused residency program distinguished nationally for its training in cultural psychiatry, global mental health, human rights advocacy, and resilience-building approaches to psychiatric care.

Dr. Griffith has been nationally recognized for his training of mental health professionals and development of mental health services for immigrants, refugees, and survivors of political torture in the Washington metropolitan area and in low-income countries and settings of conflict that have included Kosovo, Jordan, Myanmar, and West Bank Palestine. GWU residents are trained in the GWU human rights clinic to provide psychiatric evaluations for political asylees. The immigrant and refugee mental health services provided by the GWU residency’s collaboration with Center for Multicultural Human Services received the 2006 American Psychiatric Foundation Advancing Minority Mental Health Award. The GWU psychiatry residency received the 2016 Creativity in Psychiatric Education Award from the American College of Psychiatrists for its global mental health curriculum. He has introduced new curricula to teach residents how to engage patients’ spiritual resources in treatment, which led to 2002 and 2005 Spirituality and Medicine Awards from the John Templeton Foundation. Dr. Griffith received the 2017 Oskar Pfister Award from the American Psychiatric Association (APA) for his career contributions to the field of Religion and Psychiatry. Dr. Griffith’s collaboration with Dr. Brandon Kohrt produced a model of assessment, formulation, and intervention to counter stigma that has been both teachable to residents and the foundation for funded stigma reduction programs in multiple low- and middle-income countries.

In his scholarship, Dr. Griffith has published 54 refereed journal articles, 34 book chapters, 5 books authored or co-authored. His book, Religion that Heals, Religion that Harms, received the 2011 Creative Scholarship Award from the Society for Study of Culture and Psychiatry. During nine years of service on the APA Council on International Psychiatry, Dr. Griffith has helped establish APA policies that advocate for human rights and provision of mental health services for immigrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers. He chaired the selection committee for the APA Human Rights Award (now the Chester Pierce Human Rights Award) for five years.
Dr. Griffith is Past-President of SSPC. He served on the SSPC Board of Directors for a number of years, then as SSPC Vice-President from 2018 -2020, and as President 2021 – 2023.

Collected in a single volume for the first time, the writings in this novel anthology represent more than four decades of perspectives from the American Psychiatric Association’s Solomon Carter Fuller Award lectures, named for the first Black psychiatrist in the United States. The chapter authors—Solomon Carter Fuller awardees themselves, psychiatrists building on the work of previous awardees, and other scholar experts—offer a multidisciplinary, cross-sectional examination of both the historical and contemporary environments that inform the Black experience in the United States. Emphasizing the real challenges that Black communities have faced and continue to face, each chapter also offers reasons for perseverance in the face of adversity. Readers will come away with a better understanding of the complexity of the Black experience in America and its impact on mental health, as well as a greater awareness of and appreciation for the legacy and ongoing contributions of Black psychiatric leaders to the field.

Dr. Norris is Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Department of Psychiatry, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and on the faculty of Harvard Medical School. She is currently on the Board of Regents of the American College of Psychiatrists, and Deputy Editor, American Psychiatric Publishing. With the American Psychiatric Association, Dr. Norris was the first woman and first African American woman Speaker of the Legislative Assembly. She has served on Massachusetts gubernatorial appointed committees, including the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine and the Board of the Massachusetts Children’s Trust Fund.

Dr. Primm currently serves as Senior Medical Director of the Steve Fund, a nonprofit focused on mental health and emotional well-being of college students of color. She was formerly Director of the Johns Hopkins Community Psychiatry Program and Deputy Medical Director at the American Psychiatric Association (APA) where she led for a decade the office now known as the Division of Diversity and Health Equity. Dr. Primm is co-founder, chair, and convener of All Healers Mental Health Alliance (AHMHA), a national network of mental health professionals, health advocates, first responders and faith community leaders that facilitates culturally grounded responses to the mental health needs of Black and other historically marginalized communities affected by natural and human-caused disasters.

Dr. Fung is Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto. He is a Distinguished Fellow of both the APA and the CPA. In SSPC he has been the Vice-President (2015 – 2018), President (2018 – 2021), and immediate Past President (2021-2024), and he has served on the Board since 2013.

During his presidency, in addition to organizing webinars and collaborating with Program Committee Chairs for the Annual Meetings, he supported the formation of a Family Interest Group, Trainee and Mentorship Committee, and an Advocacy Committee, including the release of 3 organizational advocacy statements in 2020 and 2021, including an SSPC Statement on Denouncing Anti-Asian Racism, and co-hosted a webinar on Advocacy in 2021. He has participated in a leadership role for the trainee case conference sessions at many SSPC Annual Meetings as well as regularly giving scholarly presentations.

Dr. Fung was the local co-chair of the 2013 SSPC Annual Meeting in Toronto, helped host its 40th Annual Meeting in Toronto (joint day with the Hong Fook Mental Health Association, a Chinese community mental health association), and he is hosting this year’s Toronto meeting, again with a joint day with the Hong Fook Mental Health Association.