Jaleel Abdul-Adil

Enhancing Critical Consciousness in Young African American Men. A Psychoeducational Approach

Critical thinking has long been a goal of schooling, but for young African American men critical thinking skills can also aid their sociopolitical development and the analysis of the everyday economic, social, and cultural challenges they face. Thus, critical thinking has the potential to be critical consciousness—a powerful strategy for understanding social forces and the dynamics of oppression. This article describes the Young Warriors program, which cultivates critical consciousness in young African American men through the use of the movies and rap videos about contemporary urban culture. The program shows how the thoughtful use of hip-hop can help young men to critically analyze their world and the messages in popular culture on gender, culture, race, and social class. This article describes the Young Warriors intervention and its effort to cultivate critical consciousness and sociopolitical development in young African American men residing in low-income urban neighborhoods. It is multidisciplinary, drawing on several related topics: critical thinking, media literacy, political socialization, and psychosocial development. Over the years, we have conducted the Young Warriors program weekly and semiweekly in several midwestern schools and youth development settings. These schools have acute problems with violence, maintenance of an effective learning environment, disruptive gang activity, and low academic performance. All participants were young African American males, ranging in age from 11 to 21 years. Sometimes students were part of specially selected “manhood” groups that required participants to maintain a “B” average, whereas other students were from groups labeled as management problems by staff and were referred in an effort to make them more tractable. The curriculum varied depending on these factors, age, and type of organization.

Effects of the child–perpetrator relationship on mental health outcomes of child abuse: It's (not) all relative

The present study was conducted to better understand the influence of the child-perpetrator relationship on responses to child sexual and physical trauma for a relatively large, ethnically diverse sample of children and youth presenting for clinical evaluation and treatment at child mental health centers across the United States. This referred sample includes 2,133 youth with sexual or physical trauma as their primary treatment focus. Analyses were conducted to ascertain whether outcomes were dependent on the perpetrators status as a caregiver vs. non-caregiver. Outcome measures included psychiatric symptom and behavior problem rating scales. For sexual trauma, victimization by a non-caregiver was associated with higher posttraumatic stress, internalizing and externalizing behavior problems, depression, and dissociation compared to youth victimized by a caregiver. For physical trauma, victimization by a non-caregiver was also associated with higher posttraumatic symptoms and internalizing behavior problems. The total number of trauma types experienced and age of physical or sexual trauma onset also predicted several outcomes for both groups, although in disparate ways. These findings are consistent with other recent studies demonstrating that perpetration of abuse by caregivers results in fewer symptoms and problems than abuse perpetrated by a non-caregiving relative. Thus, clinicians should not make a priori assumptions that children and adolescents who are traumatized by a parent/caregiver would have more severe symptoms than youth who are traumatized by a non-caregiver. Further exploration of the role of the perpetrator and other trauma characteristics associated with the perpetrator role is needed to advance our understanding of these findings and their implications for clinical practice.

University-Community Mental Health Center Collaboration: Encouraging the Dissemination of Empirically-Based Treatment and Practice

Community Mental Health Centers (CMHC) are valuable resources for urban youth and families across the nation. Community demands for high volumes of clinical service, however, often render these agencies without ability to fully evaluate provided services or conduct rigorous research with their target populations. This report asserts the importance of establishing effective collaborations between research-oriented universities and CMHCs in an effort to bridge the gap between empirically-based treatments and “real world” clinical practice. Furthermore, this report explains the establishment of a mutually informative and beneficial university-CMHC collaboration between the Disruptive Behavior Clinic at the University of Illinois-Chicago and the Community Mental Health Council (CMHC) on an evidence-based outpatient family therapy protocol for urban youth with behavior problems. Values and guidelines to facilitate evidence-based practice for fellow academic institutions are asserted. University-CMHC collaboration is an effective way to bring empirically-based practice to the “real world,” front-line practice settings of community-based agencies that serve urban youth. Further research with regard to the maintenance and sustainability of these collaborations is suggested.

Exploring the Healing Powers of Hip-Hop

The emotional experience of children and adolescents is unique; this emotional process is a result of the environment, parental modeling, and the resources available for emotional expression (Calkins & Hill, 2007). Youth living in lower SES neighborhoods are vulnerable to trauma exposure, victimization, and limited access to resources, all of which can impact their psychological functioning, development, and adjustment.

From Voiceless to Victorious

As noted in this book’s introduction, Rap music and its related Hip-Hop culture have historically functioned as a “voice of the voiceless” for urban youth, especially its oppressed ethnic minority segments. Rap music’s initial entry into mainstream society through the accessible and amusing “Rapper’s Delight” (1979) was soon followed by the stark and sobering “The Message” (1982).