Dr. Bailey Selected as President-Elect of American Psychiatric Association
American Psychiatric Association members selected Rahn Kennedy Bailey, MD, as the organization’s president-elect. Dr. Bailey is the LSUHSC-NO Assistant Dean for Health Equity and the Psychiatric Medical Director of Orleans Parish Criminal Justice Center. He is a board-certified psychiatrist whose career spans clinical care, forensic practice, academic leadership, and national advocacy.
For more than three decades, Bailey has worked in inpatient wards, courtrooms, classrooms and with national associations to ensure that psychiatry is seen not only as a medical discipline but as a field that shapes public life. He has engaged with issues of equity, violence, and accountability, which remain central to his professional identity.
“Psychiatry is not only a therapeutic profession but also a voice in law and policy,” said Bailey. “I am grateful to my fellow APA members for electing me to this position in this very pivotal time in our world. I look forward to what we will achieve together in the coming years.”
“It will be excellent to welcome Dr. Bailey to the APA leadership,” said APA CEO and Medical Director Marketa M. Wills, MD, MBA. “He has been such a stalwart over the years in his steadfast devotion to psychiatry, to advocacy, and to APA, and I’m looking forward to collaborating with him and all of our newly elected candidates as they assume their roles this May.”
Early in his career, Bailey practiced and taught in Houston. He led a schizophrenia inpatient service, supervised clinical trials in psychopharmacology, and developed a forensic practice that included both criminal and civil evaluations.
He has chaired three departments of psychiatry during critical periods of growth and renewal. At Meharry Medical College, he strengthened psychiatric education within a historically Black medical school. At Wake Forest University, he created an Addiction Psychiatry Fellowship in 2017 at the height of the opioid epidemic. At Louisiana State University, where he became chair in 2021, he has rebuilt programs, expanded faculty, and guided the department to Aesculapian Awards for teaching in 2024.
He has authored 68 peer-reviewed academic articles in over 20 journals, addressing psychotic illness, mood disorders, forensic psychiatry, confidentiality, risk management, and the psychiatric consequences of incarceration. His books—"Health Disparities” (2013), “Gun Violence: A Psychiatrist’s Perspective” (2018), and “Intimate Partner Violence: A Forensic Review” (2020) — extend psychiatry into debates about inequity and violence.
Bailey is a Distinguished Fellow of the APA, and among other accolades, has been recognized with the organization’s Chester Pierce Resident Research Award (1995), Solomon Carter Fuller Award (2024), and Presidential Commendation (2025). He also served as president of the National Medical Association in 2012-13 and is currently president of the Black Psychiatrists of America.
Bailey’s term as president-elect began in May at the conclusion of the APA Annual Meeting.
The APA, founded in 1844, is the oldest medical association in the country and also the largest psychiatric association in the world with more than 39,200 physician members specializing in the diagnosis, treatment, prevention, and research of mental illnesses. APA's vision is to ensure access to quality psychiatric diagnosis and treatment. For more information, please visit www.psychiatry.org.