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Be Woke, Choose Growth

Merriam Webster Dictionary defines woke as being “aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice).” Though only added to the dictionary in 2017, the word dates back to 1942 when J. Saunders Redding used the concept in an article about labor unions in the first volume of Negro Digest. It was used again in a 1962 New York Times article by William Melvin Kelley who was an educator, novelist, and filmmaker. In modern times, woke has been used when talking about Black Lives Matter, Me Too, and Time’s Up. Even more recently, woke has been used when describing professional athletes who value wellness and enforce boundaries in support of their mental health. Woke both simplifies and neatly summarizes an impetus for change that touches on every aspect of our lives, including our graduate medical training programs, fields of practice, and professional organizations. We have more than 40 years of combined experience in graduate medical education, forensic psychiatry practice, and involvement in professional forensic organizations. We have observed that the residents and forensic fellows of today are different in significant ways from trainees of the past. Millennials and Generation Z adults currently training in psychiatry demand their educators and organizational leaders be woke. Doing things the way we have always done them is unacceptable. They want accountability and system transformation yesterday, not in some vague future. Concerns about racism, sexism, sexuality, and work-life balance are as important to many of today’s psychiatry trainees as learning how to do a risk assessment or how to select the correct medication for bipolar disorder. Furthermore, trainees expect their future careers to align with their social justice and wellness values. Those of us from earlier generations should take note of this well-worn adage and make a choice: “Change is inevitable. Growth is optional.” The journey to wokeness is a hard one, paved with awkward errors of intention versus impact, imperfection, and sometimes painful introspection, but we say be woke, choose growth. In this editorial, we make the case for being woke by reviewing inequities that affect trainees, including those of gender, race, and sexuality, realizing that we are scratching the surface of the many inequalities which exist in psychiatric education, professional organizations, and society in general. We also discuss concepts of wellness and balance that are integral for being woke.