Taking back our streets: A clinical model for empowering urban youths through participation in peace promotion.

Abstract

A three-stage empowerment model is developed based on the experience of a psychotherapy group conducted with Black and Latino youth residents in an urban housing project with high rates of community violence. The model aims to not only ameliorate mental health symptoms related to exposure to community violence, but also enhance youths' ability to transform their sociocultural context through peace promotion. The three stages are (a) addressing chief complaints and symptom reduction, (b) exploring narratives, and (c) fostering empowerment and peace through community action. Conceptual and clinical strategies are described within each stage, using case illustrations from the psychotherapy group.The goal of this article is to describe a three-stage clinical model that aims to empower adolescents through peace promotion, addressing not only the impact of episodic violence (e.g., witnessing a shooting), but also challenging Correspondence should be addressed to Martı ´n La Roche,

A Conceptual Framework for Utilizing Black History Knowledge as a Path to Psychological Liberation for Black Youth

“…Another goal in the therapy room becomes creating a space in which the complexity of social identity is explored. La Roche and Tawa (2011) suggested that an important piece of healing clinical symptoms related to racial discrimination involves youths examining their narrative for personal and cultural expectations as well as learning to resist and combat negative racial stereotypes that may contribute to misinterpretations of their own experiences. Introducing or talking about the historical and contemporary realities (i.e., using BHK) that inform clients' lived experiences and feelings can support the process of personal growth.…”

How do peace psychologists address the violent assaults on Black people’s lives? A review of studies published in the Peace and Conflict journal.

“…The authors not only recognized the historical and contextual contours of their participants’ lives at the beginning of the articles, or offered somewhat more in the remainder of the study, they sustained their attention on the manifestations of structural and physical violence stemming from past and current racism. For example, this occurred in research conducted on Ugandan children (Mayengo et al, 2018), on how Whites perceived Black South African protestors during the #FeesMustFall movement (Kiguwa & Ally, 2018), and on a program targeting Black and Latino/a teenagers from violent communities (La Roche & Tawa, 2011). The other 11 studies comprise the special issue on the Apartheid Archive Project by South African researchers.…”

“…At the core of their study’s findings, the authors revealed language in which associations of savagery were used to reinforce institutional practices of symbolic violence against the students. Although the Kiguwa and Ally (2018) study entailed no contact with participants, La Roche and Tawa (2011) included close involvement with the research participants. The authors engaged the participants throughout a process that eventually yielded a community action project that was initiated by the youth, Black and Latino students who were also seen in therapy for the problems they experienced as resulting from violence.…”

“…Although the literature was limited in its exploration of racialized violence, we are not entirely without new, practical knowledge. When there is attention directed at racialized violence, for example, we can learn that work with young, Black teenagers in Boston has an element of empowerment that translates into the cultivation of social action (La Roche & Tawa, 2011). Second, we can learn that when there is freedom among researchers in exploring the racial terminology used by participants that serves as an ongoing source of conflict in their lives, there also are opportunities for rich dialogue between researchers and participants that can contribute to the development of these relationships (La Roche & Tawa, 2011).…”

“…When there is attention directed at racialized violence, for example, we can learn that work with young, Black teenagers in Boston has an element of empowerment that translates into the cultivation of social action (La Roche & Tawa, 2011). Second, we can learn that when there is freedom among researchers in exploring the racial terminology used by participants that serves as an ongoing source of conflict in their lives, there also are opportunities for rich dialogue between researchers and participants that can contribute to the development of these relationships (La Roche & Tawa, 2011). Ultimately, we learn that the ability of the investigators to share their understanding about race as they conducted the research helped promote a process of peace-building, as in the Mayengo et al (2018) and La Roche and Tawa (2011) studies.…”