The role of discrimination and social defeat on black mental health

Black populations are diagnosed with schizophrenia at a rate that is significantly higher than white populations. This elevated diagnostic rate is often the result of misdiagnosis. This article includes a brief literature review and case presentation highlighting the importance of understanding complex racial trauma when evaluating and treating Black clients.

What makes us tolerant of administrative burden? Race, representation, and identity

This article connects the literatures of administrative burden with those of representative bureaucracy and group identity. We derive two hypotheses from extant scholarship that, adapted to the case of administrative burden, propose the following: Citizens will be more tolerant of burden if their race identity overlaps with that of the bureaucrat administering the burden, and if potential benefits are targeted at people who are similar to them. Using a survey experiment based on a stratified sample of 465 U.S. residents, we find little support for the hypotheses. In fact, while Black participants barely responded to the treatments at all, we see that white participants were most tolerant of burden when served by a white bureaucrat in a program that benefits Black clients. The article calls for more research on the subject to build nuanced theory, including contextualizing propositions across identity groups and drawing on additional theoretical ideas.

Representation Is Not Enough: Symbolic Representation and Perceptions of the Police

Representation in government tends to improve clients’ outcomes, but often has not done so for Black police clients. Representation may have perceptual effects on Black clients separate from its ability to influence outcomes. This mixed-methods research examines representation’s effects on Blacks’ perceptions of police. Representation did not seem to improve perceptions. Results led to a consideration of why representation was not effective. Qualitative analysis revealed that some Black police clients see Black officers as more like White officers than themselves. Participants came to understand that representation did not improve outcomes and adjusted their perceptions of Black officers.

A Problematic Conflation of Justice and Equality: The Case for Equity in Music Therapy

A historical basis and a therapeutic foundation are given for understanding the importance of equity when considering contexts of race in music therapy, specifically with African-American or Black clients. Those contexts are broad, including, but not limited to Black clients, Black music, diversity and inclusion, safe spaces, multiculturalism, access to music therapy education, access to services. Examples are given of the Black experience in the United States related to self-definition, self-sufficiency, growth, and resiliency. Both cultural and musical aesthetic contextualization are pointed to, and connections are drawn between the navigation of Black people through different types of oppressive systems, and the negotiation of double-bind dilemmas that try to force Black disembodiment when trying to live authentic personhood in the face of proscriptive and prescriptive forces. Despite this systemic oppression, Black people continue to show a resilience in society as well as therapeutic and health settings, which is seen more readily when therapists and professionals can center in the margins the lived experience of Black clients, decenter themselves where appropriate, and practice a critical consciousness that actively uses counterhegemonic and antiracist practices. As music therapists have begun to understand joining ethics and evidence together through the self-advocacy of some populations, we must do the same while explicitly centering equity in our work with Black clients. If music therapists truly espouse justice, then there should be a critical examination of this in the profession-- in ourselves, our work, our relationship to music, our organizations, and in our education and training.