Date
12-19-2023
Department
School of Behavioral Sciences
Degree
Doctor of Education in Community Care and Counseling (EdD)
Chair
Steve Warren
Keywords
African-American church, clergy, parishioners, mental health illness, mental health stigma, mental health professionals, contingency values, core values
Disciplines
Social and Behavioral Sciences
Recommended Citation
Smith, Rosalind R., "A Phenomenological Study Of African-American Clergys’ Experiences With Mental Health" (2023). Doctoral Dissertations and Projects. 5070.
https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/doctoral/5070
Abstract
The purpose of this hermeneutical phenomenological qualitative study was to describe African-American clergy’s lived experiences with mental health and mental health’s influence on the construction of their teachings, sermons, and church practice. The goal was to use interpretation to bring to light to an underlying coherence of actions of a group of people. This study reduced individual African-American clergy beliefs regarding mental health to a universal understanding. There were four philosophical assumptions in this study: 1) a search for wisdom to understand the phenomenon of African-American clergy’s lived experiences with mental health influence their teachings, sermons, and church practice, 2) no judgments about reality of mental health to African-American clergy was formed until the data was analyzed, 3) African-American clergy bring both subjective and objective experiences as part of their lived experiences, and 4) the reality of African-American clergy was only perceived within the meaning of their individual experiences. The two research questions formulated that guided this study included (1) How do African-American clergy perceive their experiences with parishioners’ mental health? (2) How do African-American clergy interpret the lived experience of using their lived experiences with mental health in constructing teachings, sermons, and church practices? The theory guiding this study was social constructivism because culture and context is important in understanding what occurs in society yielding the ability to construct knowledge. Data collection consisted of six semi-structured interviews with senior pastors of African-American churches. Findings showed all the participants shared common experiences with four of the six particpants being recipient of professional MH services. All participants acknowledged a stigma existed in the African-American church regarding mental health and they felt it was important as pastors to help dispel this stigma. All participants reported they integrated mental health and life application into their sermons and bible teachings.
