Introduction

Creating culturally centered therapeutic interventions begins with understanding how communities experience and make meaning of suffering. However, if we are to truly recalibrate mental health, we must also examine the coping mechanisms that already exist within those communities.

For Black women in particular, mental health cannot be understood outside of the intersecting realities of systemic racism, gendered expectations, and chronic exposure to structural stressors. These conditions do not simply shape distress. They shape how individuals pursue, sustain, and, at times, reclaim wellness.

Barriers to traditional mental health treatment include cost, stigma, limited access, and lack of culturally responsive care, and have led many Black women to rely on alternative pathways to sustain their well-being. For decades, Black women have been the center of families and communities, creating spaces of healing while also carrying the emotional and practical burdens of others. Despite these challenges, many have navigated difficult circumstances without developing severe mental illness, while others have experienced significant mental health challenges and found ways to move through them.

Yet, the field rarely centers the lived experiences of those who have both struggled and coped. How do Black women maintain well-being in the face of layered adversity? What can their coping strategies teach us about resilience, unmet needs, and the limitations of existing systems? Examining these questions offers an opportunity to move beyond individual coping and toward a more holistic understanding of mental health that challenges and reimagines the systems intended to support it.

Conceptual Framework: Superwoman Schema

At the center of this work is the Superwoman schema, a  theoretical framework that captures the quiet, often unspoken, under-acknowledged ways Black women hold together themselves, their families, and their communities (Woods- Giscombé’s, 2010). It helps us understand the expectations placed upon Black women and those that they put upon themselves. It reflects the ways Black women continue to endure, adapt, and maintain an ethos of care in the midst of crisis. The superwoman schema, guided the research design, data collection, and interpretation of the findings. This framework  was used to capture positive outcomes expressed by Black women, including the preservation of self, family, and community and grounded  a nuanced examination of how Black women faculty navigated the dual crises of the COVID-19 pandemic and intensified racial reckoning.

Methods

The final sample of participants, who were recruited via email and social media outreach, included 22 Black women faculty who have navigated employment at higher education institutes in the United States. An exploration of experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic related to institutional and personal experiences, coping mechanisms, social supports, insights on well-being, and stress management was conducted through semi-structured interviews via Zoom. Pseudonyms were used to preserve confidentiality, and participants were informed of their rights.

Findings

Our study found several coping mechanisms used amongst Black women, including spirituality, social support, traditional mental health, creative and media-based coping, and exercise. Within their narrative answers, participants explained how their experiences with coping helped shape their ability to manage mentally during turbulent times. Here are the accounts of our participants:

Religion and Spirituality

Religion and spirituality have both been cited in the literature as coping mechanisms utilized by Black women (Drakeford, 2017). Pew Research found that in comparison to other racial groups, African Americans were more likely to be associated with a formal religion. Notably, 87% noted affiliation with a religious group (Sahgal & Smith, 2009). Several participants highlighted the role of spirituality in their lives:

Karen,  a 50-year-old Black woman faculty member

“I can’t wait from Sunday to Sunday to go to church and get a message. I listen to something daily… something that just keeps me centered. You can call it prayer… manifestation… some people have vision boards… it’s kind of the same thought process… usually just that centers me, calms me down.”

Denese B, a 51-year-old Black woman faculty member with a doctorate degree

“I am a Christian, and so, you know, I firmly believe that God has you right where he wants you to be. So I’m very much led by my faith, actually, it’s become even stronger, I would say, in the past, probably a couple years, especially this past year, and I mean 2023 into 2024.  Or I pray. Like, at the start of the year, I actually started, like, reading my Bible more and got, like, I have it on my desk.”

Symone, a 29-year-old Black woman faculty member

“Or, you know, you pray about it, right, when it comes to religion, and it’s like, I’m a Christian…”

Ijele, a 46-year-old Black woman with a doctorate degree

“I did not know that black catholic church was a thing. Until I was a black Catholic. And I’m like, where have you been all my life? So I love it. So, you know, so that community has actually been great.”

Social support 

The literature reveals that Black women value social support as a coping strategy correlated with reduced adverse effects of mental health conditions (Pasha et al., 2025). Black women often establish support systems through familial relationships, participation in religious and spiritual practices, and engagement with community organizations (Chandler, 2020). Particularly relevant is individual perception of social support as a coping skill and protective factor for decision-making and problem-solving (Louie et al., 2021). Participant responses underscore the prevalence of social support as a core tool to support well-being:

Chantel,  a Black woman with a Bachelor’s degree who works in academia

“So, like, now I do have, like, regular check-ins with my partner, with friends, and we kind of go through kind of a checklist, if you will. Like, how’s your, you know, mental, emotional, spiritual health? How’s your physical health? Like, we check in with each other in those ways.”

Arises, a Black 40-year-old woman with a Masters degree

“I am married, so I have my husband, and then I have a close friend, and I have a few friends. So sometimes I might have to call my sister and go, let me give you an something by you. Maybe it’s me. And she’ll go, no, girl, you right on the morning. No, that was right. That was the right of you. Or she’ll say, no….Okay, maybe I need to pray on that. When I go into my meditation, I take everything out of my head and thoughts just tend to pop in, like someone’s whispering to me on some areas, and I’ll go, oh, yeah, I didn’t think about that.”

Jules,  a 56-year-old Black woman with a doctorate degree

“I think about my sister friend groups, even though it’s not therapy, in some ways, it is therapy. You know, when we’re together, we’re talking about things, and I think about my different relationships, and I do have a close girlfriend who is a licensed, practicing social worker, and so she has her own practice and so forth. And sometimes we have conversations, and I laugh because, again, she’s one of those individuals I like to look, observe.”

Allison,  a Black 9-year-old full time employee in academia

“We have to support each other more. We might not all be in the same disciplines, but you know our struggles can be similar, and our support for each other should be there, you know, and mentally just taking care of each other and showing up, no matter what that looks like. If it’s you’re gonna be presented this conference. Okay, I’m gonna pop in for that day. I just wanna support you, or just sending a text saying, Hey, good luck! You know, I hope it goes well.”

Traditional Mental Health

            The literature suggests that Black women face barriers to treatment including accessibility, distrust of providers (Ward et al., 2009), and lack of culturally responsive interventions (Modeste-James et al., 2024). Despite these challenges, Black women have increasingly engaged in psychotherapy with stronger willingness and positive attitudes toward engagement and outcomes (McCall et al., 2023), particularly when met racial matching with therapists of similar backgrounds (Scharff et al., 2021). Additionally, pharmacological treatment has been used to manage mental health, although lower rates of usage are reported (Miro-Rivera et al., 2025). Participants shared in detail about their experiences with therapy and the use of medication to cope:

Symone, a 29-year-old Black woman faculty member

“I’m an advocate to find a therapist for someone who looks like you. I’m able to be myself unapologetically. Like, I don’t have to code switch. I don’t have to do anything. I can just be myself. I could show up as myself. Right. And that’s something that has really helped me and motivated me to take care of myself and learn what it actually means to take care of myself without feeling guilty.” 

Daysie, a 53-year-old Black professor

“…like, at the beginning of the pandemic, that people had become so bold in encounters with others and that white men had particularly become very emboldened in their encounters with black women. And so I saw that, you know, I experienced that. That was one of the things that I talked through in therapy, and it’s one of the things that I think was very impactful to me as I think about how we navigate through this system, academia, other systems, within.I intend to go back into therapy because I’m taking on a new position which will require me to, from my perspective, remain in therapy so that I can have that level of support for myself. Yeah.”

Jules, a 56-year-old Black woman with a doctorate degree

“I understand within the black community, a lot of people don’t think about therapy or think they need therapy, and it’s a good way sometimes to let go of some of that burden that you’re carrying. And so I try and approach it that. That way when. When I do go into those therapy sessions, you know, that’s a space where I can share what I’m feeling and so forth.”

Creative and Media Based Coping

There is limited research on Black creativity (hooks, 2014; Mims et al., 2022). Black women continue to build coping skills related to creative and media-based coping. Gardening has been associated with increased feelings of pleasure and happiness (Onishi et al., 2005) and horticultural therapy correlates with positive mental health outcomes (Wood et al., 2025). Black women have increasingly built shared communal space through virtual platforms such as podcasts and vlogs, often combating negative images of the population and increasing representation in media (Bentley-Edwards & Adams, 2024). Specifically, Black Americans have utilized inclusive entertainment content to resist the prevalence of damaging and distressing news coverage of Black communities (Fayne, 2023).Participant responses highlighted engagement in creative and media based coping strategies:

Jules, a 56-year-old Black woman with a doctorate degree

“… making sure that I was aware of things, but then having those mental check ins and realizing when, okay, this is becoming too much. News cycles were becoming too much. So I had to cut that off when I wanted the news. I grew up watching the Today show with my parents before they went to work and before I went to school. But I found that all of the news cycles was burdensome with what was happening on the political scene, but then also what was happening to our people with this disease that was running rampant and I had to disconnect. I couldn’t. I couldn’t watch the news cycles because I found myself going into a dark place. So instead of watching, and I still haven’t gotten back to watching those shows daily.”

Daysie, a 53-year-old Black professor

“You know, I like being out in the sun, so if I can sit outside in the sun and read or just listen to music, that’s really. That’s great for me in terms of reducing stress and just helping me to connect with myself, but really just finding solace in things that give me joy and making sure that I commit to doing those things right, not leaving too much time between when I. When I last took a day to do something meaningful for myself.”

Fearon, a 53-year-old Black woman in academia

“I started doing adult paint by number, like the highly specific. And that was very therapeutic. That was very therapeutic, though. And gardening. I got really into the gardening and houseplants. I had, like, one houseplant before COVID and then I have like eight or ten. Like, I had a lot. And so that was. Gardening was another thing… And there was a lot of baking. A lot of baking.”

CarolWD, a 53-year-old Black professor with a doctoral degree

“And I picked up a couple of, you know, habits… I mean, hobbies. My husband would call it a habit. He calls it my addiction. But Lego building. Adult Lego building.” 

 “So for a while, that was my kind of. Okay, deep breath. Spend, you know, an hour or so working on whatever Lego build that I have…”

Exercise

Much of the existing literature has framed physical activity as an intervention for Black women in response to high-risk medical health conditions (Blackshear, 2025; Howard & Bartholomew, 2024; Black & Sharma, 2017). Nonetheless, exercise has been used as a holistic approach to wellness (Vergeer, 2020). Vigorous physical activity and walking as a form of exercise has shown to decrease mental health symptoms (Wise et al., 2006). Although research examines unique barriers to physical activity for Black women including body image, caregiving responsibilities, and environmental and access disparities, (Howard & Bartholomew, 2024), Black women have engaged in exercise not passively, but as an intentional form of coping (Sweeney et al., 2025).Participants explored their experiences of utilizing exercise a mode of coping:

Chantel S, a Black woman with a Bachelor’s degree who works in academia

“I love being outdoors, being active. I recently, like, even more so, started enjoying going to the gym again before the semester started. But going to the gym does wonders for mental health. Love it.” 

Aries, a Black 40-year-old woman with a Masters degree

“Like when I feel like I’m on the verge of crying or very upset, I take myself out, go outside, and I do a walk. I walk. Hopefully it’s sunshining like it is day I walk. Or if I can’t walk, I go out on a balcony and I’ll do a tree pose or meditate, and I also will put on music. Pre pose yoga.”

Denise B, a 46-year-old Black woman in academia

“I mean, something, anything physical. Like, usually when I go to the gym, I feel like it is really, definitely for me, it’s like I feel stronger and I feel just very alive. Even if I have to go for a walk, like sometimes, even if I can’t run, if it’s decent outside, and if I just go for a walk. It’s nice. I like it.”

Allison, a Black 29-year-old full time employee in academia 

“I started doing my home workouts, and I remember it was called the Body Project on Youtube, and it was a husband and wife and I started doing the workouts with them… Jason, Jason Toye…I started following them.”

Moving Forward                  

The narratives shared by Black women in this study do more than highlight coping strategies. They reveal a critical truth about the current state of mental health in the United States. Black women are not simply surviving within existing systems. They are actively creating pathways to wellness in spite of systems that were not designed with them in mind.

If we are to meaningfully recalibrate mental health, we must move beyond asking individuals to cope better and instead ask how systems can do better. The burden of wellness cannot continue to rest solely on those navigating structural inequities. Recalibration requires a shift from individual adaptation to institutional accountability.

This means reimagining how mental health is defined, accessed, and supported. In higher education and beyond, institutions must create environments that do not require constant resilience as a prerequisite for survival. Workloads must be structured in ways that allow space for restoration and reflection. Access to culturally responsive mental health care must be expanded, not treated as a privilege but as a standard. Affinity spaces and community-based support systems should be recognized not as supplemental, but as essential components of well-being.

Additionally, the coping strategies identified in this study, spirituality, social support, therapy, creative expression, and physical movement, should not be viewed as informal or secondary. They offer a blueprint for what holistic mental health support can look like when it is grounded in lived experience. Rather than attempting to fit Black women into existing frameworks, there is an opportunity to build frameworks that reflect the ways they already sustain themselves and their communities.

To recalibrate mental health in a meaningful way, we must also confront the role of systemic racism in shaping both distress and access to care. Without this acknowledgment, any effort toward equity will remain incomplete. True recalibration requires not only expanding services, but transforming the conditions that necessitate coping in the first place.

Ultimately, this work calls for a collective shift. One that honors the resilience of Black women, while refusing to rely on it as a substitute for justice. The question is no longer how Black women cope, but how systems can evolve so that they no longer have to carry so much, so often, alone.

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