Will There Finally Be More Black Psychiatrists?

With a shortage of Black psychiatrists and an ongoing mental health crisis, Dr. Russell Ledet tells us his hope for change.

By Anissa Durham

We’ve come a long way from the bondage of slavery. But has our mental health gone far enough? Currently, only 2% of psychiatrists and 4% of psychologists are Black. Of the thousands of providers across the country, the chances you can access a Black mental health provider with either medical degree is unlikely.

Black youth suicide death rates continue to rise faster than any other racial or ethnic group in the United States. In a 10-year national survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the rates of suicidal thoughts and behaviors increased. In 2021, Black students were more likely than Asian, Hispanic, and white students to attempt suicide.

The looming life-and-death consequences of not having enough culturally competent providers continue to show. This is just one factor in the mental health crisis. Social determinants of mental health, like adverse childhood experiences, poverty, food insecurity, and racism, all add to the toll so many Black folks are forced to navigate.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

While many point to access, policy change, and investment, one Indianapolis triple-board psychiatrist in training is leading a thoughtful and intentional change to the mental health field. Dr. Russell J. Ledet, a physician-scientist, sat down with Word In Black to talk about why he’s so invested in the community, and what he hopes to change for the next generation.

Word In Black: Tell me how you started The 15 White Coats.

Russell Ledet: In July 2019, one of my best friends and I got our Ph.D.’s together. We both went to HBCUs, and Black history is extremely important to us. So, we went to visit the Whitney plantation in New Orleans, and I brought my eldest daughter, who was eight years old at the time.

I felt like she came out of there a totally different person, almost like the ancestors got a hold of her. When we got back to the car … she interrupted the conversation that Philip and I were having, and she said, ‘I think Black people have come a very long way — because I’m riding in the car with two Black doctors and there was a time when we were enslaved.’

She sparked this idea in my mind. In December 2019, I ended up going back to the plantation with 15 of my colleagues. We took the tour and some photos. We were in all black with our white coats on. What you see in those photos is the juxtaposition of progress in systemic oppression.

We posted it on social media with the intention of showing the world how far we’ve come, and it went viral. We made a conscious decision that we weren’t gonna take that virality and use it for clout, we want to use it to do good. So, we ended up founding a nonprofit, The 15 White Coats, to make sure that we can diversify health care.

The way we went about doing that is taking those photos and putting them in classrooms all over the world, so that kids can imagine being just like us. I want kids in the hood where I can from to imagine being like me.

Then, we started getting some money.

Applying to medical school costs $5,000 to $10,000, if you come from a marginzalized environment, the likelihood you have that laying around is pretty slim. And if you do got it laying around, you ain’t just handing it off. So, we give out a lot of scholarships.

As physicians, we recognize that one of the biggest keys to being successful in health care is being able to read well. But, the problem is kids that live in marginalized communities don’t have access to books that reflect lived experiences. So, we started building these things called resilient reading book boxes. We partnered with a Black woman who owned a bookstore, and most of the books were by Black authors and illustrators. So, we curated book boxes that were grade-appropriate.

Since then, we’ve raised millions of dollars. This past year, we were able to prepare 50 people from HBCUs, Hispanic-serving institutions, and Indigenous-serving institutions for medical school. That’s a quarter million, we’re dropping — so now those students are applying to med school right now, and they never would have been able to do that without it.

That’s our way of changing the game.

WIB: You’re very vocal on social media about health care disparities that communities of color face and this need for more representation. Why is this important to you, and why do you want to help the next generation?

RL: Because if not me, then who? This is what the ancestors left for us to do. Asking myself the question, how valuable is the community to me, that I’m willing to spend time out of my life to do this work. This is worth my life, it’s worth me doing this work while I’m alive.

I’m gonna say what needs to be said. I’m gonna do what needs to be done. So, if people tell me I’m too challenging, or they’re gonna take my job away. I’ve been broke all my life. I’ll just go back to the hood and do it on a smaller scale. I’m not about to leave my community out here, high and dry … it’s time to do something different.

Sometimes you gotta be willing to lose in the process of trying to learn how to win.

WIB: Black psychiatrists only make up 2% of all psychiatrists. Why did you decide to focus on Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in a field that is mostly non-Black?

RL: When I was a kid, I wouldn’t have believed I am who I am. But I also could never imagine somebody who looked like me sitting me down and saying mental health is important. Some of the comments that Black boys hear growing up, like ‘shut up before I give you something to cry about or your sister could’ve took what you’ve taken.’ That kind of stuff is basically saying ignore your emotions, and then we wonder why so many young Black men are so dysregulated.

So, if I’m in this position and I understand all of that, but I kept my cultural currency, then I’m like the cheat code. Many of my colleagues do whatever it takes to be majority adjacent. I don’t need my colleagues to like me, I need my hood to be better.

Portrait of Russell Ledet, Tulane School of Medicine student, January 2021. Courtesy of Russell Ledet.

I need the communities where I came from, to have the economics to get off food stamps, to not have food deserts, and low education environments. First, people gotta think differently. How can you think different when half your life all you’ve experienced is trauma, and then you’ve got nobody to help you process the trauma?

You gotta have somebody who has cultural competency but also medical knowledge. And I got both. Psychiatry kind of found me. My wife and I are raising two little Black girls, and with our own little princesses, I realized how important their mental health is. But there’s so many Black boys who just gravitate towards me.

I go visit boys who are incarcerated all the time. Half the time, they don’t believe I am who I am, until somebody else tells them. It’s a marathon, I’m just one person running, and I’m gonna have to hand it off to somebody when I get up out of here.

WIB: What do you hope to change?

RL: I just want Black kids to know that their feelings are valid. The trauma they are going through, the way they experience this world, the way they are viewed and treated in this world – they are not crazy. There is a way to process what they got going on, and that doesn’t hinder them from becoming great, from becoming lawyers or doctors or writers.

It’s so hard — 2% of psychiatrists are Black. You know what that means: ain’t no Black boy gonna see a Black man who has been through what he’s been through, as his psychiatrist. It ain’t gonna happen. They ain’t got enough of us in every state.

We gotta figure out a way to exponentially grow what we know. My dream is to have a whole bunch of Black kids in the Chicago Bears Stadium just talking to them about mental health.

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