The Mental Health of

Black Women: 

Their Risk Factors, Their Resilience, and How Counselors Can Help

 6  CE Hours

African American women significantly underutilize mental health treatment services, when compared to White women. Recent research is shedding more light on the mental health of African American women and their coping skills. This webinar uses published research studies as a lens for looking at psychosocial influences such as neighborhood disorder, social and family support, religion, sexual assault survivorship, economic insecurity, education, discrimination, and the Strong Black Women persona, to see how those may intersect with African American women’s mental health. Throughout the course, we will explore risk factors for poor mental health, as well as resilience factors that contribute to posttraumatic growth in African American women.

OBJECTIVES:

1. Describe the psychosocial influences on African American women’s mental health including religion, sexual assault, Strong Black Women persona

2. Recognize the resilience factors contributing to AA Women’s Posttraumatic Growth

3. Discuss new research-informed responses to the mental health of Black American women

Helping

Minoritized Clients Explore the Disenfranchised Grief

of Everyday Racism

5 CE Hours  

 The losses caused by everyday racism run deep and wide in the lives of minoritized clients but are not generally recognized by society. The non-finite losses and chronic sorrow of minoritized clients can be heavy upon their shoulders but may have never been explored from a grief and loss perspective.  How does one grieve the moments of dignity loss that racism brings? How does one mourn the health effects of medical racism? How does one grieve the effects of being treated like a threat? How does one grieve over the shorter life expectancies brought about by health disparities? How does one grieve the freedom lost by the burden of suspicion that is on your race? How does one grieve the losses that are born out of ethnic bias, criminalization, broken treaties, stereotypes, microaggressions,  stolen land, separation of families, devalued traditions, and tokenism?

In this course, we help professional counselors understand racism's ambiguous loss and disenfranchised grief in clients' lives.

OBJECTIVES:

1. Define Ambiguous Loss and Disenfranchised Grief.

2. Understand the unique set of challenges experienced by individuals facing loss attributable to racism.

3. List useful strategies for working with clients navigating the damage caused by race-based trauma, ambiguous loss, and disenfranchised grief.

Bringing the

Mental Health

of Black Men

Out of the

Shadows

6 CE Hours 

In many ways, Black men in America defy the odds every day. The mental health of this amazingly resilient population has, until recently, been overlooked by mental health treatment systems. At the same time, the physical health of Black men has been devalued by medical healthcare treatment systems. And neither of those treatment systems has yet to fully earn the trust of this population. As a result, many Black men suffer in silence. The statistics on rates of mental health problems may be largely unreliable as stigma, as well as varying symptom definitions, contribute to underreporting. Despite the lack of historical research, recent studies are shedding light on the mental health of Black American men and their coping skills across the lifespan. This course provides an overview of recent (2019-2022) findings and best practices for the mental health of Black American men. 

OBJECTIVES:

1. Describe the influences on African American men’s mental health and how racial discrimination effects differ by gender,

2. Discuss the age-specific concerns of African American men across the lifespan from elementary school to older adulthood, and

3. Discuss new responses to the mental health care of Black American men.

Ethics, Race,

and Culture in

Clinical

Supervision

5 CE Hours 

  The importance of bringing ethical and meaningful consideration of race- and culturally-related material into counseling and clinical supervision cannot be underestimated. In clinical supervision, these discussions can give both the counselor and the supervisor a space to explore multicultural content that may be emotionally charged and often avoided. In times of public polarization along racial and cultural lines, the therapeutic relationship can be vulnerable. This workshop, designed for the counselors who use supervision and the clinical supervisors who provide supervision, addresses every counseling and clinical supervision session as a cultural encounter; examines approaches to exploring culture in the context of clinical supervision for the benefit of the entire cultural triad (client, counselor, and clinical supervisor); and looks at population-specific ethical considerations in clinical supervision.  

OBJECTIVES: 

1. Counselors and supervisors will learn to recognize and process the influence of race-related and culturally-related experiences on the therapeutic process

2. Counselors and supervisors will strengthen their interpersonal and professional skills and ethical practices when exploring diversity-related issues as interventions in counseling or in supervision

3. Counselors and supervisors will learn how to recognize, process, and recover from race-related ruptures in the therapeutic or supervisory relationship