User:Kozygirl/Strong black woman

Research / Health Effects
Another study by Stephanie Castelin and Grace White argue that the “Strong Black Woman” Schema, or SBWS as they call it, negatively affects the mental health of Black women. (INSERT SCHEMA DEFINITION) To study this they interviewed 212 college-age Black women, collecting data on numeral scales of their amount of psychological suffering, resilience, suicidal behavior, and SBWS agreement using scales with phrases like “calming down is difficult” or “nothing is worth looking forward to”. Based on their data, namely the strong positive correlation between the upholding of the SBWS and psychological suffering ( r = .56, with the p-value being less than .001), Castelin and White were able to validate their hypothesis; the SBWS is destructive to Black women’s mental health. Internalizing the stereotype affects the way Black women are perceived, expected to behave, and the way Black women view themselves, adding a tremendous amount of additional stress to the average Black woman.

In her academic journal article with the Social Work in Public Health, Dr. Wendy Ashley argues that successful psychological treatment must incorporate “cultural competence”, meaning clinicians must have adequate awareness of mythologies and stereotypes like the Angry Black Woman, their origins, manifestations, and the complex unique experience of Black women. She argues that negative stereotypes like the Angry Black Women heavily impair how Black women are perceived, negatively affecting their mental health and how they receive medical treatment. To support her argument, Ashley discussed a case example in which a thirty-five-year-old mother and psychology student reported severe symptoms of anxiety, depression, and sexual abuse-related PTSD. A traditional treatment plan would focus on alleviating depression and anxiety symptoms while engaging in trauma-focused interventions to break down the PTSD symptoms, but the woman had expressed that past therapy encounters had not worked. So the therapist introduced a culturally competent treatment plan that incorporated methods to safely navigate anger and other emotions. This produced a breakthrough for the client and a safe environment for her to experience the complete range of her emotions in a way that was not available to her before. This case study supported Ashley’s argument because through incorporating racial and cultural awareness, the revised treatment plan was able to cater more toward the unique struggles the woman faced. Instead of setting standardized goals which are traditionally Eurocentric in nature, the treatment plan was crafted to explicitly address her experience.

In their journal article Dr. Sandra P. Thomas argues that Black Americans were disproportionately negatively affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and the racial injustices of 2020 causing a massive mental health crisis in the Black community, but that this crisis cannot be adequately addressed until psychiatric professionals learn the psychological effects of racism and address their own racism. To support her argument she cites evidence of widespread racial bias in the psychiatric community, some being that Black patients are more likely to be considered psychotic by practitioners than depressed and that Black women receive less screening, treatment initiation, and guideline-abiding care for depression.

In their study Summers and Lassiter argue that the Black community is one of the most evident minority groups in the U.S. yet their psychological issues are one of the least effectively treated. They examined the perceived clinical mental health needs of Black patients by Black counselors and suggested these observations would better inform other counselors and professionals on how to effectively address Black mental health issues. An example of one of the five findings is that the practitioners reported the Black community’s need for “culturally-sensitive trauma, grief, and loss work”. This means incorporating knowledge of transgenerational grief and trauma, whether from slavery, racism, abuse, family-specific situations, and more, is essential to effective treatment. Summers and Lassiter argued that treatment without this contextual cultural knowledge usually produces a wide gap of unaddressed stress and grief which undermines the integrity of treatment.

Relationships with other stereotypes
The strong black woman stems from other tropes upholding specific archetypes and traits used to depict black women in media. The angry black woman serves as a base due to the underlying portrayal of being aggressive in nature, and often used as comedic relief. This stereotype negatively affects how Black women's emotions and feelings are addressed, especially in healthcare. The mammy stereotype depicts black women as caregivers, motherly/helpful figures, and submissive. The Mammy stereotype enforces the belief that black women are inherently submissive, docile, and devoid of their own desires and ambitions. The Jezebel stereotype portrays black women as sexually promiscuous and hypersexual beings, feeding into the stereotype that their only value lies in their physicality. This stereotype not only devalues black women's intellect and abilities, but also perpetuates the objectification of their bodies. This stereotype dates back to the era of slavery, when black women were objectified and treated as sexual objects for the pleasure of their white masters.