On The Suite Spot, sports psychiatrist Dr. Derek H. Suite, MD brings together neuroscience, performance psychology, spiritual wisdom, and lessons from elite sport...practical tools for the people who can't afford to choke when the pressure rises.
Built for athletes, executives, military professionals, first responders, coaches, clinicians, and anyone carrying real weight, each episode sharpens focus, builds resilience, and helps you manage pressure, recover well, and sustain momentum.
This is where the conversation moves beyond motivation into the habits, mental skills, and deeper questions that shape performance across mind, body, and spirit.
For science, for soul, for success...this is The Suite Spot.
In today’s episode of The SuiteSpot, despite some technical difficulties with our audio, we had the pleasure and the privilege of sitting down with one of the most distinguished psychiatrists in the country, Dr. William B. Lawson, MD, PhD.
Dr. Lawson’s career spans decades of clinical care, research, teaching, and leadership. He served for 15 years as Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Howard University, and he held faculty roles at Vanderbilt, UC Irvine, the University of Arkansas, and the University of Illinois.
He is Professor Emeritus at Howard and at Dell Medical School at the University of Texas at Austin, where he also led work on health disparities. He trained in psychiatry at Stanford and completed a fellowship in clinical psychopharmacology at the National Institute of Mental Health. He is a past president of the Black Psychiatrists of America, the Washington Psychiatric Society, and the DC chapter of Mental Health America.
He has also chaired the Section of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences of the National Medical Association and served as editor of the Journal of the National Medical Association.
Dr. Lawson has written more than 200 publications, and his research on serious mental illness, psychopharmacology, and substance use has had federal, industry, and foundation funding for decades.
Throughout his career he has pushed the field to face racial and cultural disparities in diagnosis, treatment, and trust. He founded the Institute for Reducing Disparities, and his honors include the American Psychiatric Association’s Solomon Carter Fuller Award and Jeanne Spurlock Award.
In this conversation, Dr. Lawson talks about what first drew him to science, medicine, and psychiatry. He makes clear that bipolar disorder in the African American community is real, and he explains how it, and depression too, can present differently and be missed as a result.
He also offers advice on the paths anyone can take toward joy and a positive outlook, including taking the long view instead of judging life only by the moment in front of us. Just being in his presence was powerful, and it meant a great deal that someone of his stature would sit with us here on The SuiteSpot. We hope this conversation moves you the way it moved us.
Greetings and welcome, sweet spotters. Welcome back to the sweet spot. Delighted that you're joining me today. I have a treat for you. I have one of the best psychiatrists in the country, Dr. William B. Lawson. Finally, he is here with us on the Sweet Spot. Dr. William Lawson has spent four decades of his life devoted to showing how race and culture shape, who gets diagnosed, how they get treated, and who gets left behind. He has an incredible body of work, books and papers. He has over 200 publications. He's the former chair of psychiatry at Howard University. He's the past president of the Black Psychiatrist of America, and the former editor-in-chief of the Journal of the National Medical Association. He has won many awards, including the APA's Solomon Carter Fuller and the George Whinnaker Awards. Dr. Lawson is without parallel. So let's get right into this interview. You're going to have a fantastic time. Thank you for joining me here on the Sweet Spot. You know, Doc, first of all, I got to tell you, so many of us in the field of psychiatry and medicine and mental health have grown up just looking at some of the research that you've done, some of the contributions that you've made across the spectrum of mental health. So where do we begin? I think what I'd love to talk about is how does somebody like you exist? Like where did you come from? Because I read somewhere, you can correct me on this, that it wasn't as if you were born into doctors and born into a research family that was already doing research. You come from a beginning that is not necessarily scientific, is that
Yeah, I was born and raised in the community, Kingquake County, outside of West Point, Virginia. This was a pretty was listed at that time as the Forest County in Virginia. But at that time, my brother and I got together and we were this was a farm. So one of the things we wanted to do, we were all interested in how we could see animals work. So we created a little menagerie around our house. And while our folks were going out looking at the hugs and so forth and something to eat, we were trying to see what makes them tick. Wow. And this was the same guy stuff. And in our area, the idea of African merchants going into something like medicine and research just wasn't something that was considered. I remember talking to my advisor in high school and told him I had some interest in medicine. So he said, aha, you become a medical illustrator. And that was about the closing. So I did get Howard University, a medicine in psychology, then later developed a career into animal research involved teaching at the University of Lord. And I supplied, to my surprise, got accepted University of Chicago, and then from there got a lot of exposed to an academic settings, research, and built on the work that I was doing when I was doing animal research.
disorder in African-American communities, is is that is this really a thing as far as you see it? Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02
It's often misdiagnosed, but uh 30% of the time is misdiagnosed. And we also surveyed using the screen estimate in our primary care clinic and found that uh 10% of folks had part of bipolar spectrum disorder. And we thought that was unusual, but then colleagues at Carol Cornley University found the same thing. And so what we're finding is that bipolar spectrum, unfortunately, is uh pretty common in the community. It's just not diagnosed by non-mental health specialists.
SPEAKER_03
Well, how do you, in your practice or how do you advise folks to approach someone, a loved one, or somebody in their circle who exhibits bipolar disorder symptoms? And how does it manifest in our in our community?
SPEAKER_02
Is it any different than what we found is that bipolar disorder, especially bipolar one, is to have
native. And that is that people that go out spend a lot of money, have a lot of sexual initiation, and get involved in potentially dangerous acts. But what we also find is that, and I think this is more true in low-income individuals than in our community, and it doesn't necessarily result in people being euphoric and happy, but also irritable and angry. And as a result, folks often end up in the correctional system. So find a lot of folks who's in prison and jail having to have bipolar disorder that is unrecognized. Because the other side of bipolar is that folks can go into a major depression in which they want to be sad or unhappy for no obvious reason. And bipolar is a major risk factor for suicide.
SPEAKER_03
Is there a specific way that we we need to talk to people of color who might be in the manic phase? Or is there any research around that?
SPEAKER_02
Or I don't I Yeah, I've been working with churches that to kind of frequently run into the situation where folks say can't pray and do this all alone. And I remind folks, if you bring a leg, sure your mental can pray over that leg, but if sure else
put a cast on, make sure that it heals. So the same issue I said, prayer spiritually faith can be very, very, very effective. But the bottom line is that at least uh severe mental illness often on medication and appropriate target interventions tend to be more effective.
SPEAKER_03
Got it. So you are saying that don't obviously use all the modalities that we have available in the community, but don't throw out the uh, don't dismiss the medication and the other targeted interventions that might come through the hospital or the or the unit.
And how do you protect your mental health? Like, what would you suggest for us out here? Like, the world is tough, man. We're living in difficult times, as you know, and with all that's going on politically, socially, out there, especially in marginalized communities, finding reasons to uh be happy, to have joy, to all of those elements. How does one do that today?
SPEAKER_02
Well, what we find is that uh if you keep your positive out of them all life, it doesn't have to be positive in a sense of ignoring bad things that happen, but keeping a sense of optimism, recognizing that many of us, our ancestors, been through worse circumstances and came out successful. That we developed our own our own communities, our own resources, such as the church, you hang out with the barber shop, and uh going out and adding to the educational system, and uh all of these add together, keeping the mind stimulated, well educated, also socializing in a positive place. And the principle is very straightforward. Do unto us later than do unto you. Very straightforward. Uh and also taking the learned view, recognizing that you're doing not for yourself, but also for future generations. And when you take that perspective, take a spiritual approach, you can begin to move towards more effective self-help. Many religious have already discovered this. We can try and successful, we can do the same thing for everyday life. Doesn't have to be religious, so that helps.
Absolutely. What happens is that there's not just black people, also low-income people, marginalized people. I talked to folks who are from Nigeria and Kenya. Oftentimes, the best biological vegetative signs of depression are there. That is loss of appetite, eat too much, or some sadness, or being irritable. A lot of those symptoms are there. But if that piece don't come out and say, I'm depressed and I'm sad. Many cultures simply don't feel it's appropriate to go around and say you're sad. Many cultures don't feel as promoted to say something that's your fault. They look outside what's being the cause. And in fact, in real world, that's often the case. So what's happening outside does affect what's happening on the inside.
SPEAKER_03
Do you find that the trust factor has it gotten better or worse over your career? You know, you talked about black people with schizophrenia getting more injectables or being over medicated, that there's this lack of trust or the disparities in your work at the center. Is the trust has it gotten better, worse, or is it about the same from what you see?
SPEAKER_02
In a lot of settings, people tend to trust, distrust their opposition, and probably because of the historical experience that black people had. But I've seen them now more because of health awareness, more people coming out and discussing these issues, talking about them, and trusting their primary care providers. A lot of problems also is that it become socially acceptable then now not to be going around staring at people's face and telling them that they don't like it. But we also find that people do it in indirect ways. And so while it's good to be trustful, at least folks in our community would learn very quickly that it's important to be trustful but still vigilant. Because it can be greatly disappointed when fans do not know as the larger society says there's shift.
SPEAKER_03
Wow, how exciting that we would be able to have access to you, man, and to be able to do this. I'd like you to come back. Um we're out of time, but I would think first of all, thank you for spending this much time with us. Given all that you have to do, we are grateful that you took this time out to be here with us on the sweet spot and just really bless us with this wisdom and knowledge. We uh it's it's really cool.
SPEAKER_02
I appreciate your opportunity to be able to speak to a larger audience, to get the word up, and glad to reach out to some of our young people to talk about some of these kinds of issues.
SPEAKER_03
Absolutely. Well, we look forward to having you back. Maybe when you come back, we can go over one of the books. I think that's the next one. We we'll talk specifically about one of your books in some more detail. Would that be okay? Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02
Thank you.
SPEAKER_03
Yes, man, and stay amazing, man. Stay amazing. Thank you for everything. Thank you so much.
So there we have it. Thank you so much, Dr. William Lawson. Thank you so much for your time, your candor, and for the career that you spent making sure no one gets left out of the room with mental health. Please be sure to pick up Dr. Lawson's book, African American Health, and you can find him at William B. Lawson MDPHD.com. I'm Dr. Derek Sweet, and you've been listening to the Sweet Spot.
