More on Tichianaa Armah

Advocacy for the under-resourced and educating the next generation to provide culturally humble care are the unmistakable themes in Dr. Tichianaa Armah’s career.   

Tichianaa Armah, MD is the first Chief Psychiatry Officer at one of the nation's largest Federally Qualified Health Centers. She also serves CHC Inc. as VP of Behavioral Health, Senior Faculty for their Weitzman Institute, medical advisor of the PMHNP residency program and Co-PI on their HRSA funded Optimizing Virtual Care grant. After graduating from the University of Rochester School of Medicine, she attended Yale University for her psychiatry residency, where she was nominated for the Vera Pastor Award by the American Orthopsychiatry Association (now  called the Global Alliance for Behavioral Health and Social Justice). She placed a spotlight on racial disparities in Mental and physical health as the 2011 American Psychiatric Association Yale Minority Fellow, at a time when many continued to deny these gaps existed based on race. Upon graduating she was awarded the Benjamin S. Bunny Award by the Psychiatry Residents association for her exceptional service to advocacy for residents, patients, clinical care and education. 

It is probably no surprise that Dr. Armah is one of the founding organizers of the Yale Department of Psychiatry Social Justice and Health Equity curriculum (SJHE). She remains involved in teaching and supervising residents as an Assistant Clinical Professor at Yale School of Medicine. On a national level, Dr. Armah was recognized by the U.S Government as a Distinguished 400 awardee in 2021 and honored by the American Psychiatric Association for Excellence in Teaching Residents, one of its highest teaching awards for 2022-2023 academic year. Locally, she was the 2022 Champion for recovery for her dedication to patient care by Laurel House, which cares for people with severe mental illness, and was awarded the Roger Coleman Memorial Award for advocacy and service to her patients by the Connecticut Psychiatric Society. She is dedicated to her work and has spent the last decade advocating to increase access to equitable, high quality care, for adults and children, including promoting the adoption and maintenance of telehealth locally and nationally. 

Dr. Armah believes that access to culturally informed and equitable mental healthcare is a human necessity the world cannot afford to ignore.