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BLACK WOMEN AND THE AMERICAN BLACK CHURCH: IDENTITY, STIGMA, AND THE POLITICS OF MENTAL HEALTH DISCOURSE
Dissertation

BLACK WOMEN AND THE AMERICAN BLACK CHURCH: IDENTITY, STIGMA, AND THE POLITICS OF MENTAL HEALTH DISCOURSE

Ashley Wells
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
2026
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Abstract

African American religion American slavery Black Church Black women mental health trauma Mental health
This dissertation examines the relationship between the Black Church, Afro-Christianity, and mental health discourse in the lives of Black women in the United States. It argues that the Black Church has long functioned as both a site of refuge and a site of regulation within Black life: a space that has offered community, survival, dignity, and spiritual grounding in the face of racial violence, while also shaping cultural expectations around silence, endurance, and emotional restraint. By tracing the historical and cultural authority of the Black Church, this project explores how Black women’s experiences of suffering, vulnerability, and care have been interpreted through religious frameworks that do not always align with the language or practices of modern mental health treatment. In doing so, the dissertation situates contemporary conversations about stigma and help-seeking within a much longer genealogy of captivity, respectability, and communal survival. Drawing on interdisciplinary methods in American studies, this dissertation combines historical analysis, cultural criticism, and literary analysis to examine how Black women’s mental health has been shaped by the intertwined forces of religion, race, gender, and institutional neglect. The project moves from histories of enslavement, emotional repression, and the formation of the Black Church, to an analysis of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye as a literary case study in racialized psychological trauma, and finally to a consideration of how culturally congruent models of care might better serve Black communities in the present. Ultimately, this dissertation argues that the work of improving mental health outcomes for Black women is not simply individual or therapeutic, but also historical, communal, and institutional. By rethinking the relationship between the Black Church and mental health professionals, this project offers a framework for more culturally grounded, collaborative, and equitable approaches to Black women’s wellness.

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