Intervention Resources

Afrocentric Interventions and Adaptations of Clinical Practices

This reference edited by Breland-Noble, Al-Mateen, and Singh (2016), available from Springer, was designed to fill a significant void in the child and adolescent mental health literature. This book is intended to help understand the needs of African American youth from both a culturally sensitive and culturally relevant perspective. To achieve this goal, the book is divided into three major sections including one focused on the nature of mental illness in African American youth, another focused on varied approaches to treating mental illness (including tested treatments and potentially culturally relevant treatments), and a third describing specific interventions and their outcomes.

Cultural Competence in Therapy with African Americans

Huey Jr. & Rubenson (2018)

Underlying calls for increased cultural competence are assumptions regarding the effectiveness of standard treatment approaches with African Americans and the ubiquitous benefits of cultural tailoring.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy with African Americans

Shalonda Kelly (2006)

This article explores common cultural tendencies that may present challenges to treatment. Ideas for modifying CBT for African Americans are provided. Finally, the article discusses CBT with African American families.

Antiracist Adaptations to Dialectical Behavior Therapy for White Therapists

Pierson and colleagues (2022)

This article discuses culturally responsive antiracist treatment within a dialectical framework and critical race psychology. Antiracist adaptation to DBT is needed to correct for context minimization errors that create an invisibility of racism. 

Trauma-Responsive Interventions and TF-CBT Adaptations

This manual addresses strategies for implementing Trauma‐Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF‐CBT, Cohen, Mannarino & Deblinger, 2012, 2017), for self-defined Black youth ages 3-17 years and their parents and/or other caregivers who experience racial-related stress or trauma as well as other types of significant trauma.

Integrating Racial Socialization into TF-CBT for African American Youth

Metzger & Colleagues (2021)

This article discusses ways to adapt TF-CBT to include racial socialization or the process of transmitting culture, attitudes, and values to help youth overcome stressors associated with ethnic minority status.

Utilizing TF-CBT as a Framework for Addressing Cultural Trauma in African American Children and Adolescents

Phipps & Thorne (2019)

This article proposes a model for an intervention designed to mitigate cultural trauma in African American children and adolescents using TF-CBT.

Trauma-Responsive EMPOWER Lab Featured Resources (by Dr. Isha Metzger and Team)

1b. 5 stages of racial identity.pdf
1c. Racial_Trauma.pdf
1a. Cognitive Distortion Alter-Egos.pdf

EMBRace: Developing a Racial Socialization Intervention to Reduce Racial Stress and Enhance Racial Coping among Black Parents and Adolescents (Anderson et al., 2019). The purpose of this article is to describe the development of the EMBRace intervention targeting the Racial Socialization (RS) practices between Black adolescents and families. The authors discuss racial stress and trauma (RST), discuss why traditional coping models for stress are inadequate for racially specific stressors, and describe how RS can be used as a tool to intervene within Black families. 

Addressing the Mental Health Needs of Black American Youth and Families: A Case Study from the EMBRace Intervention (Anderson et al., 2018). The five-week Engaging, Managing, and Bonding through Race (EMBRace) racial socialization intervention was developed to enhance coping strategies for parents and adolescents and reduce adolescent internalizing and externalizing problems. The purpose of this open access article is to describe a case study of one family through a mixed methods approach.

Wrestling with Destiny: The Cultural Socialization of Anger and Healing in African American Males (Stevenson, 2002). The PLAAY project (Preventing Long-term Anger and Aggression in Youth) is a multi-component program that seeks to reduce the anger and aggression of Black urban youth with a history of interpersonal conflict. This article begins with a reflection on the author’s own emotional and cultural anger towards the limits of Western scholarship and collegiality, examines the theological implications of imaging on Black male mental health, and finally describes the development and procedures of PLAAY. 

Racial Trauma Healing Tools

Racial Trauma is a term coined to capture the deleterious impact of race-related stress, racial harassment, racial violence (including witnessing such violence), racism, and discrimination on mental health functioning. This CYF TIPs page includes tools, resources, and practice recommendations on how to prevent and intervene with race-based traumatic stress.

Family-Focused and Family-Based Interventions

This activity book was developed by the National Black Child Development Institute and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, in collaboration with other organizations serving the African American community. The book’s activities are designed to help parents/caregivers talk with their children about emotions, to find ways to express thoughts and feelings that might be hard to say out loud.  This book responds to the ongoing need to provide materials for parents/caregivers to help their children cope with extraordinary crises.

In this article on the treatment of African American families by Nancy Boyd-Franklin (1995), a background of therapists working with poor, inner-city, African American families is provided. Next the effects of racism on gender roles are examined, and treatment-relevant issues related to poverty are highlighted. In each of these areas, implications for practice are described. A multisystem intervention model for working with these families is introduced 

App-Based Mindfulness and Psychoeducation Tools

The Safe Place app

The Safe Place is a psychoeducational app that aims to provide education on different mental health presentations. The app is specifically geared towards the Black community and providing education about mental health, and mental illnesses that they may be more vulnerable to than others. The app offers pages on topics such as mental health statistics, self assessment questions, self care tips, mental health resources, and inspirational quotes, videos, and podcasts. More information available from PsyberGuide.

Liberate Meditation app

Liberate is a subscription-based meditation app that includes practices and talks designed for the Black community. The app is designed to support Black folks on their path to healing by naming and offering resources for common cultural experiences, like internalized racism and micro-aggressions.

Shine app

Shine is a self-care app and meditation app that uses an instant messaging platform to interact with users. Most care plans, or “shine talks”, involve listening to a daily audio track for seven days. Along with the audio tracks, Shine sends inspirational images and relevant educational articles through messaging. There are a number of resources offered in the app including challenges, meditations, educational resources, and daily rituals. More information available from PsyberGuide.

BEAM is a collective of advocates, yoga teachers, artists, therapists, lawyers, religious leaders, teachers, psychologists and activists committed to the emotional/mental health and healing of Black communities. Their mission is to remove the barriers that Black people experience getting access to or staying connected with emotional health care and healing.