Dr. Rishi Mahabir

Meet Dr. Rishi Mahabir, Michigan psychiatrist and Do No Harm member. 

In the last few years, Rishi has felt DEI ideology slowly creeping into his workplace. It got worse in 2020, when Governor Gretchen Whitmer mandated that all licensed workers take “implicit bias” training in order to keep treating patients.

“Within the first 10 minutes of the presentation, it felt like indoctrination,” Rishi says. “It all felt so forced and accusatory. The implication was that we are all racists, and we just don’t know it.”  

Feeling manipulated, Rishi sat down at his keyboard to search for doctors who felt the same way, and our website topped the search results. “It was refreshing to see a community of physicians sharing my concerns,” he says.

Rishi works in a group practice with pro-DEI policies, and feels uneasy about how it pushes divisive labels onto practitioners and patients. 

“Implicit bias training doesn’t have anything to do with actual patient care. About 98% of my patients lean Left in their politics, and that has never mattered either way. To give patients the best care, we have to leave opinions and biases at the door and focus on care. Implicit bias asks us to do the opposite. It divides us into categories, which is unhealthy for the populations I work with, who are vulnerable to these types of divisive frameworks.” 

Since the rise of DEI, Rishi has seen an uptick in anxiety and depression in his patients, along with a decline in resiliency. “They are quick to be offended, quick to shut down,” he says. Their children are also quick to fall victim to social contagions like sex confusion.    

Rishi works with many parents of teenagers with Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria who left home for college and announced they wanted sex changes shortly thereafter, seemingly out of left field.

“It’s very disheartening to hear their stories. Many parents — who are politically progressive — feel their kids have gotten caught up in a cult. College environments are pushing a social agenda onto students who are fresh out of high school, who are looking to form an identity, who want to feel like part of a group. People encourage them to attach themselves to these labels, and to pursue interventions that have permanent effects like infertility. It is predatory behavior.”

Rishi fears retribution at work for speaking out against radical DEI and gender ideology, but he’s not letting that intimidate him into silence.

“Finding groups like Do No Harm has given me the courage to speak out,” he says. “Our minds are a  very powerful thing, and we have to be careful about the way that we frame things for our patients, and if they are helping or hurting.”Dr. Mahabir will have to take another DEI training soon, as mandated by the Governor of Michigan. This time, he plans to take Do No Harm’s version. If you’re faced with a similar mandate, please let us know – and find out if your state allows our course to satisfy their requirements.