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Department of Behavioral and Community Health Research and Learning Seminar Series hosts: Black men’s mental health: Healing from complex trauma and toxic environments Presented by: Dr. Craig Fryer, Dr. Joseph B Richardson, and Dr. Kevin Roy

Joseph Richardson aims to explain the relationship between violence and HIV/AIDS among young black men in Prince George's County

"Black Lives Matter’ Without Black People?" challenges academic commitment

In many urban communities, unemployment, substance misuse, violence, and mass incarceration among African-American males has reduced the number of conventional adult male role models. These role models could potentially serve as positive sources of social capital for at-risk adolescent African-American males. An understudied population of black men has a long tradition in the black community as conventional adult male role models, mentors, and social fathers for black male youth. Black male coaches have played a significant role in reducing crime and delinquency among at-risk youth as well as influencing positive youth outcomes. Yet this population of African-American men in disadvantaged communities has received little attention. Using in-depth interviews, community-based participant observations, intensive home observations, and auto-ethnography, this study found that black male coaches serve as a critical form of social capital for black male youth and single parents in high-risk neighborhoods. The results suggest that research needs to focus more on the role of coaches as mentors and in some instances social fathers who provide quality adult supervision, guidance, information, support, encouragement, and community bridges to other forms of social, human, and cultural capital for inner-city black male youth.

Joseph Richardson, African American Studies

For hospital-based violence intervention programs (HVIPs), gun violence intervention and the treatment of firearm-related injuries for male survivors require a  sui generis  network of team members that includes physicians, caseworkers, mental health care providers, and violence intervention specialists (VIS). The VIS can play a vital part in the success of HVIPs, but there is no published literature about the roles, functions, and best practices of this position. A case study conducted at the Capital Region Violence Intervention Program, an emerging HVIP at the University of Maryland Prince George's Hospital Center, demonstrates the importance of the VIS fostering deep levels of interpersonal connection with survivors of violent injury. The VIS actively seeks to increase the rate of psychosocial services usage. Due to cultural competence, street experience, and a willingness to share lived experiences as a survivor of violent injury, the VIS has credibility when discussing mental health symptomatology and usage of services for young Black male survivors of violence. The relationship between the VIS and male survivors of violent injury markedly enhanced the provision of trauma-informed care, peer support, and mentoring. This case study demonstrates the importance of marshalling the shared lived experiences of the VIS to increase trust and perceived credibility by young Black male survivors of gun violence as a means to decrease trauma recidivism.

PROGRESS initiative joins UMD researchers with Maryland policy makers