TDMHDD Mental Health Expert Published in Book Focusing on African-American Women's Health Issues

NASHVILLE — Dr. Freida Hopkins Outlaw, Chief Nurse and Executive Director of Special Populations and Minority Services at the Tennessee Department of Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities (TDMHDD), has recently published an important work in the second edition of African-American Women’s Health and Social Issues.

Dr. Outlaw contributed the chapter entitled “Being Strong and Silent: African-American Women and Depression” which explores the many facets of depression in the lives of African-American women including trends in social and public policy influencing its recognition and treatment. This edition was published through Greenwood Press and released in July under ISBN 0-275-98082-0. The book, edited by Catherine Fisher Collins, with the forward by Dr. Vivian Penn, former Director of the Office of Research on Women’s Health, National Institutes of Health, contains chapters written by a variety of experts including doctors, nurses, social workers, psychologists, historians, and educators.

“An ever increasing number of people are experiencing a mental disorder at some point in their life. Dr. Outlaw’s work truly sheds new light on what several African-American women go through when faced with depression,” stated TDMHDD Commissioner Virginia Trotter Betts. “Her experience and expertise in the field of mental health is excellent, and her dedication to improving minority health and women’s issues is reflected in her many accomplishments here at TDMHDD and throughout the nation.”