Did You Know That Today Is World Day of Social Justice?

PSYCHIATRIC VIEWS ON THE DAILY NEWS

I did not know that! And yet, as you may have noticed, I often pay special attention to those special days of psychological meaning that we celebrate in the United States and the world.

I also was not planning to do a column today as I was just returning home from a long road trip. I was beginning to think about the special meanings of the recently past February 17 for my next video, and ran across the special meaning of today, one that should be near and dear to psychiatry, but is relatively unknown. Why?

It is World Day of Social Justice.

As I found out by coincidence or serendipity, February 20 was designated by the United Nations General Assembly in 2009, and is dedicated to addressing world poverty, inequality, human rights, and the like. So let us count some of the ways social justice is relevant to psychiatry:

• Certainly, the rising prevalence of mental health disorders in the United States, along with the necessary resources to treat them, should be included.
• Wars and the international conflicts that produce increased trauma and prolonged grief, like that in the Middle East and Ukraine, seem to fit the social justice concern of the misuse of power.
• It reminds me of the social psychopathologies—the antis, isms, and social phobias—that I have been claiming to need more psychiatric attention.
• The day certainly fits psychiatry’s growing interest in the social determinants of mental health.
• The day, once it is recognized, fits the social part of our bio-psycho-social model, yet that social part has been relatively neglected.

So I invite you to use this day to be inspired to increasingly address social justice in the upcoming year. Our allies in doing so can include the law, politics, religions, and economics. More on this day coming in future columns and videos.

Dr Moffic is an award-winning psychiatrist who specializes in the social, cultural, ethical, spiritual, and religious aspects of psychiatry, and since 2012 is in retirement as a private pro bono community psychiatrist. A prolific writer and speaker, he has done a weekdays column titled “Psychiatric Views on the Daily News” and a weekly video, “Psychiatry & Society,” since the COVID-19 pandemic emerged. Among his diverse and rare combination of major awards for psychiatrists, he was selected to receive the international Oskar Pfister Award for his contributions to religion, spirituality, and psychiatry at the American Psychiatric Association (APA) annual meeting in May 2026. Previously, he was chosen to receive the 2024 Abraham Halpern Humanitarian Award from the American Association for Social Psychiatry; the 2016 Administrative Psychiatrist Award from the American Psychiatric Association; in 2002, the one-time designation of being a Hero of Public Psychiatry from the Speaker of the Assembly of the APA; at the turn of the new millennium, an APA Art Association award at the annual meeting for his displayed collage “Any Point of View (of Rusti) is Pure Delight”; and in 1991 the Exemplary Psychiatrist Award from the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill. He also presented the third Rabbi Jeffrey B. Stiffman lecture at Congregation Shaare Emeth in St. Louis on Sunday, May 19, 2024. He has been an advocate and activist for mental health issues related to climate instability, physical burnout, and xenophobia, among other social justice causes, serving on many related local and national community and professional Boards. He has edited the requested 5-volume series on religions and psychiatry for Springer: Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, Christianity, The Eastern Religions and Spirituality, and in 2026, the Second Edition of Islamophobia and Psychiatry. He serves on the Editorial Board of Psychiatric Times.