Black queer women and nonbinary people (BQWNB) living with mental distress are an important sub-group in the Black community in need of greater attention in mental health research. However, the majority of health research about the Black community focuses on Black cisgender men who have sex with men and people who have or are at risk of having HIV/AIDS. To expand the knowledge about BQWNB, I applied critical and transformative approaches to understand mental distress. Using a Black queer feminist mental health framework and transformative healing justice lens, this phenomenological qualitative study set out to explore and describe how BQWNB living with mental distress navigated their mental health and wellbeing with a sample of 17 participants. Data were collected using one-on-one audio-recorded semi-structured interviews. There were three major findings that emerged from participants’ narratives: (1) contributors to mental distress, (2) impacts of mental distress, and (3) positive responses to mental distress. Contributors to mental distress included individual and collective trauma experiences, embodying strength and independence, and experiencing stereotypes about their sexual and multiracial identities. The impact of mental distress resulted in lowered quality of life and reported self-harmful thoughts and behaviors. Finally, positive responses to mental distress included body, mind, and spirit and community-centered responses as well as resistance to cultural norms and expectations and non-disclosure as a form of self-preservation. These findings led to an integrative (not) being-in-distress framework and a new critical approach to mental health and healing that informed anti-oppressive social work research, practice, and education.

This study is an exploratory phenomenological study regarding experiences of bullying among African American male adolescents (AAMAs) and their parents/guardians. Given the population of interest, a critical framework was used. The critical framework included critical race theory (CRT), Black feminist thought (BFT), and altruism born of suffering (ABS). According to the 2015 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, AAMAs in high school reported lower levels of bullying victimization at school and online compared to all other student groups in their data. This study was designed as a mixed-methods study with a strong qualitative component and a supplementary quantitative portion. The sample included 16 AAMAs and one parent/guardian per youth (N = 32).

The findings were organized into themes for the three areas of study: perceptions of bullying (i.e., emotion, entertainment, fighting, structure, and home life), responses to bullying (i.e., self-preservation, suffering, passivity, and standing up for other people), and barriers/supports of prosocial active bystandership of bullying (i.e., barriers, education, and taking action). The quantitative results indicated that all of the participants observed bullying (N = 32), almost all of the participants had been bullied (n = 29) and a strong majority (n = 25) experienced racialized suffering. The results of a matched pairs t-test of factor one of the Colorblind Racial Attitudes Scale (CoBRAS) and factor five the Bystander Intervention of Bullying and Racial Harassment Scale (BIBRS) indicated these measures may not be a good fit for this population.

This exploratory qualitative study is the first to examine secondary trauma experiences among capital trial defense practitioners, including attorneys, mitigation specialists, paralegals, and investigators, who work as a team in representing indigent clients facing a charge of capital murder which may result in the death penalty. Death penalty jurisprudence has been critically examined in numerous ways, and the negative psychological effects on those who are involved in the process is one of the issues that limited studies have documented. However, no systemic investigation of secondary trauma associated with capital trial defense practice for indigent clients has been conducted to date, and this dissertation aims to address this gap in knowledge.

Data were collected through semi-structured individual interviews using an interview guide, which allows participants to express their experiences in their own words in depth, while the researcher can stay focused on the research questions of the study. Data were analyzed using a constructivist phenomenological approach, and thematic identifications were conducted under overarching categories that were closely related to research questions including (1) motivation to engage in capital trial defense practice for indigent clients, (2) challenges in defending clients who face the death penalty, (3) emotional reactions to clients receiving death verdicts, (4) effects of the stress on the practitioners, (5) coping strategies, and (6) support system.

The findings indicate that a significant number of the participants had secondary traumatic experiences because of their engagement in capital trial defense practice for indigent clients. A death verdict for clients was perceived as a traumatic experience by the participants because of their long-term empathetic engagement with their clients and their family members as well as the dehumanization against their clients in death penalty jurisprudence. The participants often experienced stigmatization in their communities that was associated with their work, while organizational support in recognizing their emotional pain and attendance to psychological needs was unavailable. The findings of this study suggest that the human cost of the death penalty should be re-examined and organizational effects be made to address the negative psychological effects associated with capital trial defense practice for indigent clients.