The Need for an Altar and a Couch: How African-American Churches and Clergy can Create Safe Spaces to Confront the Stigma and Silence Surrounding Mental Health

Abstract

The abstract aims to provide tools for African-American clergy and congregations toaddress mental healthcare in their communities better. I plan to use three African-American pastors and churches with established programs and counseling centers as case studies and provide churches and clergy with the framework to offer mental health services to their church and community. I also plan to provide options for pastors and churches to partner with local mental health professionals or healthcare systems in their area and share a resource guide on planning a local mental health fair to demonstrate the importance of meeting with mental health professionals. Through examining these initiatives, I hope to identify strategies that more congregations could deploy in order to increase congregational and community engagement with counseling services. I will argue that the ultimate outcome for any initiative would be to create a network that uses trained faith leaders and mental health professionals as crisis counselors to provide counseling services as community liaisons. I hope my thesis will help empower African- American clergy to develop these much-needed resources and networks.