For the African American healing journey, it is essential for cultural strengths that preceded and followed the original injury of enslavement, and consequent racially based trauma, to be recognized and elevated. Historical trauma has offered an important framework for understanding how the structural determinants of health are related to mass group-level subjugation for Indigenous people across generations, with a growing focus on protective factors. Here, we expand the application of the historical trauma framework to African Americans, with a focus on intergenerational healing. This exploratory study examined historical evidence of healing among enslaved people of African ancestry on Southern plantations. Two themes associated with how healing practices and strategies were used by healers and seekers of healing-figuring out what to do and fighting back/resisting-were developed using a thematic analysis of a historical text. A conceptual model is introduced illustrating the intergenerational transmission of healing and well-being across generations of African Americans. Implications for policy, practice, and research are explored. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Significant conceptual and empirical evidence has been found through qualitative research about the benefits, limitations, and uses of individual interviews. However, there is scant research illustrating how researchers use specific techniques that center participants’ intersecting identities to build rapport, trust, and authentic connections during individual interviews, and especially during interviews with Black women. We illustrate how we used eight empirically grounded techniques in our qualitative individual interviews with Black women. Through our analysis of the interviews, the concept of safety emerged. “This person is safe” reflects the combined stories the women reported regarding their experiences engaging in individual interviews. In this article, we provide a brief background on individual interviewing in qualitative research, followed by the framing of our work. Thereafter, we provide context about the exemplar study, outline techniques shown to be effective in the literature, and provide examples from the exemplar study to show how each technique was used. Further research is needed to examine how researchers use various techniques in qualitative individual interviews in general, but with Black women more specifically.

COVID-19 has significantly impacted a substantial number of Black Americans. Black women, in particular, are facing challenges financially, physically, and mentally during this unprecedented time. Between serving as frontline workers, being concerned about contracting the virus, contributing to their families financially, and worrying about their loved ones’ health, Black women are experiencing great strain on their mental health and well-being. These stressors illustrate the need for social work researchers and practitioners to address Black women’s mental health. This paper presents our reflections, experiences, and response to COVID-19 as Black women and scholars. Guided by our reflections and personal experiences, we put forth suggestions and reflexive thoughts for social work researchers and practitioners to prioritize Black women’s mental health during and after these unprecedented times.

This article puts forth a culturally relevant practice framework that integrates components of intersectionality and strengths-based perspectives. This framework incorporates key factors of Black women’s social identities and builds on their strengths to provide a richer understanding of how depression is experienced in their lives. To arrive at this framework, we provide a brief summary of intersectionality; use a case study to examine the influence of race, class, and gender on Black women’s lived experiences with depression; and apply the framework—#BlackGirlMagic—to the case study. Lastly, future directions for practice, research, and policy are explored.

The county-wide lockdowns that were implemented due to the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in some in-person qualitative research studies needing to be transitioned online using a video conferencing platform. However, evaluating the feasibility of transitioning an ongoing qualitative research study focused on low-income, racial/ethnic minorities had not been performed. Orsmond and Cohn’s feasibility framework was used to evaluate this study in three primary areas: recruitment capability, data collection procedures, and evaluation of relevant resources. Recruitment efforts for the in-person focus groups (January–March 2020) and online focus groups (March–April 2020), along with data collection procedures, were measured through various counts. To gauge the resources needed to transition a study from in-person to online, the administrative capacity, the space, technology, and funds necessary to support the research study were recorded. Sample characteristics were extracted from administrative and survey data. To estimate the differences in the sample characteristics, recruitment efforts and the length of the focus groups before and during the lockdown, independent sample t-tests, or proportion tests were conducted. The sociodemographic characteristics of participants pre-lockdown and during the lockdown were similar between the two groups with most participants identifying as female, Black, single, unemployed. The average number of participants recruited, confirmed, and attended per focus group, along with the total number of contact attempts remained similar before and during the lockdown. The length of the focus groups before and during the lockdown also remained similar. The in-person focus groups did require more financial resources for their successful execution than the online focus groups. It is feasible to sustain a research study focused on low-income, racial/ethnic minorities by transitioning the study from in-person to online using a video conferencing platform. This approach should be considered from the onset of qualitative research studies to increase reach to low-income, racial/ethnic minorities.

There is little empirical or conceptual literature about depression among middle-class Black women, as the majority of the depression research focuses on low-income Black women or middle-class White women. While some work has been done to explore the ways in which race, class, and gender intersect to influence depression among Black women in general, more scholarship that puts forth an intersectional, cultural, and person-in-environment frame to contextualize the experiences of depression among middle-class Black women is needed. In this article, the authors provide a brief overview of the empirical literature on depression among middle-class Black women, present data from 30 in-depth and semistructured interviews with middle-class Black women to explore how race, class, gender, and culture intersect in these women’s lives, and put forth recommendations for clinicians and suggestions for interventions.