Professor of Urban Policy and Health at The New School in New York City, Dr. Mindy Fullilove is a board-certified psychiatrist who explores the ties between environment and mental health. She is known for her work on the concept of “root shock,” the traumatic stress reaction to the loss of some or all of one’s emotional ecosystem. Root shock can result from events such as natural disaster, development-induced displacement, or war, as well as changes that play out more slowly such as those that accompany gentrification. At the community level, root shock is defined by the loss of interpersonal ties and the “capital”—social, cultural, political, and emotional—that is vested in collective connections.

Dr. Fullilove gave a lecture at the Pulitzer on public health and the built environment, addressing the ways in which serial forced displacement, deindustrialization, and environmental degradation have undermined American society. Her lecture will explore how building solidarity across lines of race, class, religion, and gender is essential to solving the problems these harmful practices have created.

This lecture was co-sponsored by the Center for Social Development at Washington University in St. Louis as part of the Grand Challenges for Social Work, the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, and the Pulitzer Arts Foundation.