Phyllis Harrison-Ross

Abstract

Psychiatrist who advocated for mental health services for underserved populations in the USA. Born on Aug 14, 1936, in Detroit, MI, USA, she died from lung cancer on Jan 16, 2017, in New York City, NY, USA, aged 80 years. As a researcher, clinician, and educator, psychiatrist Phyllis Harrison-Ross dedicated her career to improving mental health for children, prisoners, African Americans, and other underserved and overlooked populations. “Phyllis had energy. She was gracious, nice, welcoming, warm, and sophisticated”, says Carl Bell, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago. “She was very innovative and never afraid to start something. That spirit took guts.” For more than 40 years, Harrison-Ross worked with the Medical Review Board of the New York State Commission of Correction to ensure prisoners had access to medical care, particularly psychiatric treatment. She began working with the board in the mid-1970s, and became Chair of the Medical Review Board and a member of the Commission when Governor of New York David Paterson appointed her in 2008. “She was a phenomenal person”, says current New York State Commission of Correction Chairman Thomas Beilein. “She maintained her vision into later years of making sure she was doing the right thing and giving all she had to the service of the Commission and to her job. She has imparted her legacy on the staff at the Commission of Correction. We're going to miss her but we understand her passion and how right she was.” Trained as a paediatrician in the 1960s, Harrison-Ross designed programmes that enabled children with developmental disabilities and mental illnesses to attend mainstream classes in public schools and helped to reduce the institutionalisation of children. She directed the Metropolitan Hospital's Community Mental Health Center in East Harlem from its founding in 1973 until 1999, and was Chief of Psychiatry at the hospital. She was also Associate Medical Director of Metropolitan Hospital and President of the Medical Board. Her staff of more than 600 people provided a range of adult and child mental health services to a million people in Manhattan. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York and then when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, Harrison-Ross worked with All Healers Mental Health Alliance, an organisation of interfaith-based leaders and clinicians, to provide mental health services to people. She served as the group's volunteer president and, under her leadership, the organisation received recognition for their work using telehealth solutions to assist with the delivery of mental health services. Harrison-Ross graduated from Albion College in Michigan in 1956 and, 3 years later, received a medical degree from Wayne State University's School of Medicine. She was the only African-American woman in her graduating class. She interned at what was then the Bronx Municipal Hospital Center and completed a fellowship at Albert Einstein College of Medicine from 1964 to 1966. Harrison-Ross served as President of the Black Psychiatrists of America from 1976 to 1978. In 2000, she founded the Black Psychiatrists of Greater New York & Associates. Harrison-Ross wrote many articles and textbook chapters about prison health systems, and was the author of two books in the 1970s, Getting it Together, a textbook for teenagers, and The Black Child: A Parents' Guide to Raising Happy and Healthy Children, which she co-authored with Barbara Wyden. In the 1970s, she hosted a television series about parent education and, more recently, hosted the radio talk show, Ethics on Air. For more than 25 years she was a member of the board of directors of Children's Television Workshop, which produces Sesame Street. She received the American Psychiatric Association's Solomon Carter Fuller Award in 2004 for her work to improve mental health for minorities. Harrison-Ross was a trustee of the New York Society for Ethical Culture and, at the time of her death, Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health Services at the New York Medical College. Her husband, Edgar Lee Ross, died in 1996.