Freida H Outlaw, PhD, RN

Freida Hopkins Outlaw received her Baccalaureate in Nursing from Berea College, Masters in Psychiatric Nursing from Boston College and a Ph.D. from The Catholic University of America and completed her postdoctoral study in Psychosocial Oncology at the University of Pennsylvania. She has over fifty years of experience as a clinician, researcher, educator, and policy maker in public mental health. She is currently the Executive Program Consultant for the Substance Abuse and Mental Heath Services Administration, Minority Fellowship Program at the American Nurses Association.

Prior, she was the Director of the Meharry Youth Health and Wellness Center, a health care delivery system for adolescents with a special focus on LGBT youth. For eight years Dr. Outlaw served as the Assistant Commissioner, Division of Special Populations, Tennessee Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services. For 15 years she was on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, School of Nursing. Dr. Outlaw has written in the areas of cultural diversity, management of aggression, seclusion and restraint, and the role of religion, spirituality and the meaning of prayer for people with cancer, the use of the Geriatric Depression Scale with older African Americans, Black women and depression, children’s mental health, quality of life of African American women caregivers, and the mental health needs of minority transgender youth. She was a co-author of the book Policy and Politics in Nursing and Health Care, 7th edition which was recognized with a book of the year award in 2015 by the American Nurses Association.