Ezra E. H. Griffith

Possession, Prayer, and Testimony: Therapeutic Aspects of the Wednesday Night Meeting in a Black Church

The value of the church as a psychological support system in the daily lives of many people is taken for granted. Yet, assiduous attention has not been paid to the specific mechanisms which churches may use to achieve this end. Even less attention has been given to black churches, particularly those which are independent institutions, with a loose regional or national affiliation to the well-known major denominations that allows the maintenance of the churchs own autonomy. In this paper, we describe the Wednesday night prayer-meeting in an independent black church and outline the structure of the service which facilitates its use as a vehicle for mutual aid. We also discuss the ways in which members of the group experience the service as therapeutic. The utility of this exercise for some black people is explored, and the manner in which it may serve as a coping device is delineated. This special church service is presented as a model of a therapeutic group experience which functions to help some black underprivileged people adapt to the stresses of urban living.

The Experiences of Long-Stay Inpatients Returning to the Community

THE authors of this engaged and engaging account of the return migration of 12 individuals to a community after prolonged confinement make an important move when they infuse a policy debate with the experiences of former psychiatric inpatients. Researchers and clinician-administrators now seem to be asking with increasing frequency for the views of service recipients or users; however, one is less sanguine about how well we listen to or act on those views. Mental health policy debates and decision making have for some time been informed by individual stories and experiences, but these have been largely conveyed by and from the perspective of outspokenly disappointed family members and consumer activists. Davidson and colleagues take us a significant step further by providing information from a more representative, albeit small, constituency. As importantly, they listen. In a research environment tyrannized by large samples assembled to quench the thirst for causal modeling and statistical analysis, this paper reminds us that validity deserves as much respect as reliability, that understanding does not necessarily involve regression coefficients and chi squares.

Structure and provision of services in Black churches in New Haven, Connecticut.

Historically, Black (or African American) churches have played a central role as a center of religious and political life and also as a provider of human services and a healing community. This article examined the extent to which African American churches in 1 Northeastern urban environment are involved in the delivery of health and human service programs to their communities. It also explored how comfortable Black clergy are in referring their parishioners to the formal mental health system and identified the actual level of referrals. In addition, the analyses considered the individual and organizational characteristics that predict variations in the levels of support services and the likelihood of referral. Analyses revealed that African American churches deliver a broad range of services to the community. More than two thirds of the clergy feel comfortable in making a referral to a mental health agency or professional, and more than half have actually made a referral. Both service delivery and referral levels varied by several clergy and congregational characteristics. The implications of these findings for research and health policy are considered.

Church-Agency Relationships in the Black Community

This article examines referral exchange relationships between black churches and local community health agencies by examining whether organizational and clergy characteristics influence clergy in black churches to refer parishioners to, and receive referrals from, community mental health agencies. We are interested in identifying the typical characteristics of churches and their clergy that tend to participate in these exchanges. The most significant indicators in predicting the probability of church referrals are the extent of interorganizational links and the size of a church. The data do not, however, suggest a reflective relationship; organizational factors do not significantly predict whether a church receives client referrals from community Agencies. We speculate that the lack of reciprocity in this pattern may be caused by a conflict in the levels of rationality within community agencies.

Cultural factors in the training of psychiatric residents in an Hispanic urban community

This paper describes a residents experience with his first Puerto Rican patient who practiced spiritualism, also elaborating on the major problems encountered, in so far as training for psychiatric residents is concerned. Furthermore, an attempt is made to analyze the role that residency training programs should play in preparing the student psychiatrists to assume a more sophisticated role when confronted with such patients, who are so common in the urban ghettoes of the United States.

Cultural competence in correctional mental health.

Cultural competence is an essential aspect of competence as a mental health professional. In this article, the framework of cultural competence developed in general psychiatry-acquiring knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary to understand the interaction between culture and the individual-is applied to the prison setting. Race and ethnicity, extremes of age, gender, and religion are highlighted and examined as elements of the overall culture of prisons. The model of the cultural formulation from the DSM-IV is then adapted for use by clinicians in the correctional setting, with particular emphasis on the interaction between the inmates culture of origin and the unique culture of the prison environment.

The Crisis of Managed Care in the Public Sector

Managed care in behavioral health is in its adolescence. It began in the early 1980s as entrepreneurs contracted with self-insured employers to manage mental health and substance abuse benefits. The primary objective was to control or reduce escalating costs. In the private sector, managed care grew rapidly. However, in certain geographic areas, the market for business became saturated very quickly. New business opportunities became increasingly scarce, and the competition for existing contracts has been fierce and marked by downwardly spiraling prices. The scarcity of lucrative opportunities in the private sector coincided with strong pressure at federal and state levels to cut spending by governments, which underwrite almost 60% of mental health and substance abuse services [1]. The result has been a rush to

Barbados Spiritual Baptists: Social acceptance enhances opportunities for supporting public health

The Spiritual Baptist faith has been present in the Caribbean from about the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. However, the movement only extended to Barbados in 1957 when a Spiritual Baptist preacher, a Barbadian by birth, returned to his native island from Trinidad, where he had been living for several years. The Reverend Granville Williams established the first Spiritual Baptist Church in Barbados and has continued to oversee the churchs development since its inception. This article describes the evolution of the churchs status over the past 50 years, as seen by both members and non-members of the group, from a marginalized religious group into a settled and accepted denomination. Explication of this transformation phenomenon is also explored through qualitative interviews with Barbadian clergy non-members of the group. The implications of this transformation for the interplay of religion, mental health, and social services in the Caribbean are then discussed.

Spiritual Baptist Mourning: A Model of Contemplative Meditation

In recent years, my colleagues and I have persistently examined the ways in which the black church in the U.S.A. and in the Caribbean has been of psychological help to its members.1,2 With regards to the Caribbean, we have been particularly aware that previous workers have concentrated their attention on non-Christian sects.3,4 This has minimized what we think is an important role of the Christian church.

Therapeutic dimensions of sacred garments worn by the Barbados Spiritual Baptists

As part of a broader observational study, 25 members of a Barbados Spiritual Baptist congregation and its Patriarch, along with 13 nonmembers of the church, took part in formal semi-structured interviews, in addition to informal conversations with many others. The purpose was to elicit detailed qualitative impressions of their experiences related to the evolving use of sacred garments within the rituals of the church. Over the 55 years of its development, the church experienced three phases marked by the gathering of spiritual and material strength of the members and their Leader. Members reported experiences of enhanced subjective well-being arising from their wearing of specific religious vestments they received as intended for them by the Holy Spirit with the Leader as mediator. The findings are in keeping with a body of scholarly literature and may guide further quantitative research about the place of sacred garments in the beliefs and practices of this Caribbean faith group.