Description:

Title:  Responding to the Mental Health Needs of Youth of Color by Any Means Necessary

Abstract: 

For youth of color, prolonged exposure to racial discrimination has resulted in debilitating psychological, behavioral, and health outcomes. To help youth prepare for and prevent the deleterious consequences of discrimination, many parents utilize racial socialization, or communication about racialized experiences. And, while racial socialization strategies correspond with several general therapeutic strategies widely used by clinicians, there is a critical gap between what families do to mitigate discriminatory distress and what clinicians and providers offer youth. As such, providing multiple strategies to effectively utilize racial socialization processes and develop such skills to help youth heal from the effects of past, current, and future racial trauma is important. This presentation will explore theories, practices, and burgeoning technological interventions important in the healing processes of racial trauma for families, clinicians, and researchers alike, especially in light of what is known about the proportion of time youth spend on mobile devices. Finally, this presentation will beg the question of how much evidence is enough before we deploy our skills to rapidly advancing technologies which may benefit youth of color facing increasingly more frequent discrimination in their everyday lives.