Oppression deeply impacts a person’s well-being, taking a toll on the mental health of those who endure it on a regular basis.
In response to these pressures, Boston Medical Center collaborated with local churches in Roxbury and Milton on a pilot program to help Black community members navigate the psychological toll of racism.
Dr. Nuha Alshabani, a BMC clinical psychologist and one of the program’s co-developers, said the Reconnect program incorporates education, coping skills and mindfulness techniques.
“We’re talking about things that folks have experienced in their everyday life, but providing more language for what you might call this. For example, folks have experienced microaggressions but might not have heard that term before,” Alshabani said on Boston Public Radio on Monday.
Through Reconnect, participants shared personal accounts of the racism they’ve faced in Boston, including memories of the city’s busing experience and discriminatory encounters in both the healthcare system and the workplace.
So far, Reconnect has run three groups — two at BMC and one at Twelfth Baptist Church.
Results showed significant improvements in the areas of trauma symptoms related to discrimination, coping with stress, and reducing mental health stigma.
“[It] helps with building support within the group, which folks have felt really leads to validation and normalization and getting support from their peers,” Alshabani said.
While developing the program, the team prioritized direct input from the communities they aimed to serve. Over the course of a year before the program’s official launch, they collaborated with church groups to identify the needs and concerns of community members.
“It’s one of the reasons why I’m really glad that we’re marrying a lot of the work in Reconnect with the church because we know that there’s infrastructure in churches that can help carry on some of this work that might make it more difficult otherwise,” said Devin Cromartie Bodrick, BMC psychiatrist and first lady of Twelfth Baptist Church.
“Each step of the way they were involved in designing the curriculum, picking the measures we use to evaluate, sharing it with the broader community, they had oversight, involvement and partnership and all of that,” Alshabani said.
Another co-developer, BMC psychologist Sarah Valentine, explained that oppression and discrimination, particularly based on race, can have a profound effect on mental health , leading to symptoms similar to post-traumatic stress disorder. This includes shifts in beliefs around safety and trust, a reduction in self-worth, and increased vulnerability to depression and anxiety.
Valentine described the impact of oppression as a series of concentric circles: the individual, their family or community, and then the broader geopolitical climate.
“Any oppression enacted at those different levels will impact the individual,” Valentine said. “And so [politics] is just additional stress, compounding stress and also potentially fewer avenues to address that type of stress.”
With growing political and social challenges, particularly with the current administration’s stance on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts , BMC and the Reconnect team are determined to continue their work. Valentine acknowledged the difficulties of navigating this climate, especially for healthcare institutions reliant on federal funding.
“BMC is an equity-led institution. And all of us here, we consider ourselves health equity focused clinicians and researchers. And this is a really hard time to be in that space,” Valentine said.
