Episode
Join Dr. LaToya Smith and Dr. Donya Wallace, licensed professional counselors and counselor educators, to learn why the Strong Black Woman Schema remains relevant for professional counselors and all mental health providers working with Black and African American identifying women. Drs. Smith and Wallace define the Strong Black Woman schema and offer practical strategies, based on their clinical experiences and research findings, that counselors can implement in session.
Guests
LaToya D. Smith, PhD is a counselor educator at Palo Alto University. Her research examines how African American women make decisions about seeking mental health care. Her study, Seeking Counseling Services: A Phenomenological Study of African American Women (Journal of African American Studies, 2023), interviewed ten African American women about what led them to counseling, the barriers they had to move through first, and what kept them coming back.
Donya D. Wallace, PhD is a counselor educator at Palo Alto University. Her research uses interpretative phenomenological analysis to explore how Black women who embody the Strong Black Woman archetype make sense of wellness. Her recent study, "White Girls Are Taught to Be Wives; Black Girls Are Taught to Survive": Wellness Among Strong Black Women (Journal of Mental Health Counseling, 2023), draws on interviews and focus groups with 12 African American women to trace how the SBW archetype is passed down generationally and how it shapes, and sometimes blocks, self-care.
