Writer, Social Psychiatrist
"Reading Fullilove's generous, revelatory, and brilliant work in these dangerous times, we discover a human path forward."
- Vivian Heller, author of Analysis and Exile
Books
The Urban Restoration Trilogy
All Books
“Fullilove’s approach turns the standard story of the American ghetto upside down. Instead of neighborhoods with intractable problems of their own making, isolated from their more comfortable neighbors, she sees people in constant motion, shifted, pressured and harassed by ever-changing federal and state policies that work actively to sort cities by race.”
- Robert Sullivan in New York Times Magazine
Videos
The Town Shrink
Mindy is a writer and social psychiatrist who studies cities. She works on displacement, urban mental health, and collective consciousness.
Mindy Thompson Fullilove, MD, grew up in Orange, NJ in an activist family. Her father was a prominent civil rights activist and her mother was committed to anti-racism in all aspects of her life and work. Her training in psychiatry and family therapy give her tools to make sense of the painful experiences of life, a sound understanding of social systems and a deep interest in interventions at levels of scale that could help many people. Her studies of urban epidemics -- what she called the “mad plagues of the 90s” -- led her to social psychiatry, the study of the ways in which social systems influence people’s mental health.
Cities Research Group
The Cities Research Group (CRG) was founded in 1992 as the Community Research Group of New York State Psychiatric Institute and Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and undertook studies of epidemics affecting poor and minority communities. CRG conducted studies of AIDS, crack cocaine addiction, trauma and violence. In 2016, CRG found a new home with the University of Orange.