The Green Book for Black Psychiatric Care
According to the Black Emotional and Mental Health Collective, Black psychiatric patients face a 57% higher risk of being involuntarily admitted, often while families are underinformed and ill-equipped to make life-changing decisions. To that end, BEAM has released a first-of-its-kind resource to help Black families understand psychiatric systems before a crisis hits.
The book, titled “What I Wish My People Had Known – The Psychiatric Green Book: A Guide for Black Folks,” is modeled after Victor Hugo Green’s historic “Negro Motorist Green Book,” and is edited by Yolo Akili Robinson and Kelechi Ubozoh. It pairs practical tools with historical context and advocacy resources.
Built in collaboration with patients, clinicians, legal advocates and families, alongside organizations like Disability Rights California and Depressed While Black, the book covers involuntary hospitalization, patients’ rights, psychiatric advance directives, crisis planning and caregiver advocacy.
“Too often, Black families are forced to make life-changing decisions during psychiatric crises without the information they need,” BEAM founder and executive director Yolo Akili Robinson told Because of Them We Can. “We created The Psychiatric Green Book so our communities can prepare before a crisis happens while being able to understand their rights and advocate for themselves and their loved ones with greater confidence and care.”
Kelechi Ubozoh, the co-editor of the book, has described herself as “an advocate, a mental health consumer with mad pride, and a suicide attempt survivor shattering the silence because if my Black community doesn’t start talking about it, we’ll lose more people to the tenth-leading cause of death.” See our interview with Ubozoh from 2021.
The book’s first edition covers California and Georgia, with more state-specific editions to come. The full guide is available as a digital download at a pay-what-you-can rate, with a suggested donation of $5, while a paperback version can be purchased for $15.
The name “MindSite News” is used with the express permission of Mindsight Institute, an educational organization offering online learning and in-person workshops in the field of mental health and wellbeing. MindSite News and Mindsight Institute are separate, unaffiliated entities that are aligned in making science accessible and promoting mental health globally.
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