From Palliative Practice to Transformative Praxis: A Black Feminist Psychology Framework on Black Canadians’ Mental Healthcare Service Delivery

My dissertation proposes a Black Feminist Psychology Framework (BFP) to reframe how we examine Black Canadians’ mental healthcare service delivery. BFP offers a theoretical mode of inquiry to interrogate broader structural forces —political economies, hegemonic discourses, cultural patterns, and a larger pool of social relations— that interrelate to shape Black communities’ relationship to the mental health field. BFP aims to expand understandings of service use disparities for Black Canadians and create more culturally responsive mental healthcare. My framework is ontologically grounded in a constructivist paradigm, with a Black feminist and critical psychology ideological axiology.

Applying BFP to my central research question: “What is transformative mental healthcare for Black Canadians in the afterlife of slavery?,” I look at the intersections of colonialism, neoliberalism and theism. I specifically examine colonial epistemologies in psychology, neoliberal mental health discourses and the socio-cultural values of religion and spirituality (R/S) structuring Black Canadians’ mental healthcare service delivery. Employing diverse qualitative research methods, including historical tracing, reflexive thematic analysis, and thematic literary analysis of novels, my findings offer strategies for strengthening service delivery and advancing a socially just mental health praxis.

The interview data with parish ministers and psychotherapists helped me to identify the role of neoliberal discourses in mental healthcare service provision, and the policy’s attempts to circumvent societal interventions for systemic change. Additionally, my findings from the interviews define the contours of a holistic mental healthcare strategy that is inclusive of R/S perspectives and committed to developing individual and community-level mental health responses. Examining my study participants’ reflections against fictional reimaginings of mental healthcare strategies for Black communities, my literary analysis presents a “spiritual praxis of healing.” A spiritual praxis of healing transcends the limitations of neoliberal logics and biomedicine in mental healthcare and offers a discursive map for Black mental healthcare premised on freedom-making practices and emancipation.

My dissertation presents transformative mental healthcare service delivery as encompassing historically attuned, politically engaged and culturally responsive care. It is a promising first step on the path towards stronger mental healthcare for Black Canadians and a confident stride in the long march to freedom.