Engaging African Americans in Therapy: Integrating a Public Policy and Family Therapy Perspective

Being Examples to the Flock: The Role of Church Leaders and African American Families Seeking Mental Health Care Services

“…An integration of Andersen's (1995) public policy model of health service use and Fox et al's (1995) revision of the rural de facto mental health services model (Regier and Goldberg 1978) was presented previously (Davey and Watson 2008) as a means to develop a more inclusive and culturally sensitive framework. The goal was to better capture the salient factors influencing African Americans' entry into and engagement in mental health care services.…”

“…Figure 1 reveals that Black churches and Black clergy, in particular, both historically and currently, have a salient role in helping African American families in their church communities access more formal mental health services. Davey and Watson (2008) suggest that many ethnic minorities such as African Americans continue to seek support from the church, often as a first entry point to seeking mental health care services, although often no help is sought at all. The Black church, therefore, has historically and continues to be a primary source of help as well as a gatekeeper in the delivery of community and mental health care services (Caldwell et al 1995;Neighbors et al 1998;Taylor and Chatters 1996;Taylor et al 2004;Young et al 2003).…”

“…In our study, we used one part of an integrative and more culturally sensitive framework (Davey and Watson 2008) to better understand the roles that Black church leaders play as gatekeepers to more formal mental health care services for African American families in their communities. We present empirical results to evaluate our success in a recent partnership with a Baptist mega-church as evidenced by participant recruitment and the assessment of differences in attitudes toward mental health services in church leadership.…”

“…We begin by reviewing relevant parts of our previously presented integrative model (Davey and Watson 2008), focusing on how social networks within Black churches affect African American parishioners' engagement and entry into more formal mental health care services. We next discuss prior research on Black clergy, and the historic role they have played for African Americans seeking mental health care services.…”

“…African Americans also may have feelings of shame or guilt when in need of outside help for personal problems, fears of being misdiagnosed and misunderstood by clinicians, and a general cultural mistrust of the mental health care system (Whaley 2001). Due to these barriers, many African Americans tend first to seek support from pastors or ministers during personal crises, and in some cases they may be the only professionals encountered (Davey and Watson 2008;Mattis et al 2007;Taylor et al 2000).…”