Mental health clinicians and researchers must be prepared to address the unique needs of Black Americans who have been disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Race-conscious and culturally competent interventions that consider factors such as discrimination, distrust of health care providers, and historical and racial trauma as well as protective factors including social support and culturally sanctioned coping strategies are needed. Research to accurately assess and design treatments for the mental health consequences of COVID-19 among Black Americans is warranted.

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) disproportionately impact African Americans because of profound subjection to historical-systemic oppression in addition to personal and intergenerational trauma exposure. This article utilizes a biopsychosocial-cultural framework to understand the correlates of ACE exposure in African Americans and attends to the cultural factors that contribute to resilience. We review the evidence base for culturally informed, preventive-interventions, as well as strategies for bolstering this work by capitalizing on cultural strengths that are salient in the African American community. We also highlight pertinent policy initiatives guided by recent strategic outlines by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. These policies provide the backdrop for the recommendations offered to facilitate the healthy biopsychosocial development of individuals and families. These recommendations can contribute to the expansion and creation of new policies that aim to strengthen individual coping in the face of adversity, enhance family bonds and resilience, and promote community capacity to reduce ACE exposure in African Americans.

The Coronavirus, 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is an unparalleled crisis, yet also a unique opportunity for mental health professionals to address and prioritize mental and physical health disparities that disproportionately impact marginalized populations. Black, indigenous, and people of color have long experienced structural racism and oppression, resulting in disproportionately high rates of trauma, poverty, and chronic diseases that span generations and are associated with increased COVID-19 morbidity and mortality rates. The current pandemic, with the potential of conferring new trauma exposure, interacts with and exacerbates existing disparities. To assist mental health professionals in offering more comprehensive services and programs for those who have minimal resources and the most profound barriers to care, 4 critical areas are highlighted as being historically problematic and essential to address: (a) recognizing psychology's role in institutionalizing disparities; (b) examining race/ethnicity as a critical variable; (c) proactively tackling growing mental health problems amid the and (d) understanding the importance of incorporating historical trauma and discrimination in research and practice. Recommendations are provided to promote equity at the structural (e.g., nationwide, federal), professional (e.g., the mental health professions), and individual (e.g., practitioners, researchers) levels.

Objective: African American adolescents experience disproportionate rates of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), which heightens their risk for negative social, behavioral, and health outcomes. Schools may be a source of support for adolescents exposed to ACEs; however, for many African American adolescents, schools are a source of additional stress due to experiences of racial/ethnic microaggressions. The current study examined the relationship between ACEs, school-based racial/ethnic microaggressions, and resilience after violence exposure in African American adolescents. Method: Participants included 189 African American adolescents with an average age of 15.15 (SD = 1.27, range = 13-18). Fifty-one percent identified as female. Participants reported an average ACE score of 5.81 (SD = 3.63). Moderation analyses were conducted using the three subscales of the School-based Racial and Ethnic Microaggression Scale (academic inferiority, expectations of aggression, and stereotypical misrepresentations; Keels et al., 2017). Results: ACEs were negatively related to resilience after violence exposure in all three microaggression models. The microaggressions subscales academic inferiority (b = À.05, t(183) = À2.05, p = .04) and stereotypical misrepresentations (b = À.08, t(183) = À2.04, p = .04) significantly moderated the relationship between ACEs and resilience after violence exposure, such that the inverse relationship between these two variables was stronger at higher levels of endorsed microaggressive experiences measured with these two subscales. The moderation model was not significant for the expectations of aggression subscale. Conclusions: Findings suggest that school-based racial/ethnic microaggressions negatively impact resilience after violence exposure among African American adolescents exposed to multiple ACEs. Clinical Impact StatementOur study indicates adverse childhood experiences are negatively related to resilience after violence exposure among African American adolescents and at high levels of school-based racial/ethnic microaggressions this relationship is even stronger. It is important to address the interactive effects of school-based racial microaggressions, violence exposure, and ACEs among African American adolescents to improve trauma-informed program and policies within schools to promote health equity.

The field of clinical psychological science exists within a broader field of psychology, which is increasingly acknowledged as embedded in racist and white supremacist history. In the production of clinical psychological science, the Clinical Science Model predominates as one of the most influential scientific voices that emphasizes the value of rigorous scientific theory, training, and praxis. We highlight some of the ways in which the Clinical Science Model has neglected antiracism. By examining the idiosyncratic development of the Clinical Science Model within clinical psychological science, we outline how its failure to contend with systemic racism within the field propagates a racist subdiscipline. Our hope is that by enacting difficult self-reflection, we invite other stakeholders within our field to think more critically about how systemic racism and white supremacy pervade our structures and institutions, and to begin making more concrete changes that move the clinical psychological science field toward explicit antiracism.