Where Would You Go? Race, Religion, and the Limits of Pastor Mental Health Care in Black and Latino Congregations
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Department of Sociology, Rice University, Houston, TX 77005, USA
2
Department of Sociology, University of Amsterdam, 1012 VT Amsterdam, The Netherlands
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Academic Editor: Kimberly Rios
Religions 2021, 12(12), 1062; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12121062
Received: 20 October 2021
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Revised: 20 November 2021
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Accepted: 22 November 2021
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Published: 30 November 2021
(This article belongs to the Section Religions and Health/Psychology/Social Sciences)
A growing body of literature explores how religious congregations shape attitudes toward mental health in racial/ethnic minority communities. Such research has primarily focused on the views of Black clergy and congregants, limiting our ability to understand how the views of Black Christians might differ from Christians in other racial/ethnic minority communities. We drew on focus groups with 14 pastors and interviews with 20 congregants from Black and Latino churches in Houston, Texas, to examine how church members make decisions about where to seek mental health care or direct others for help. We found that both Black and Latino Christians prefer seeking spiritual resources, like their pastor, when dealing with mental health issues, even though pastors feel limited in their ability to help congregants. The preferences of members of each racial/ethnic group, however, were driven by different logics. While Black Christians in this study sought spiritual resources based on perceived norms within the broader Black community, Latino Christians relied on pastoral care due to norms in their individual congregation. The results shed light on how religious beliefs, race/ethnicity, and social class intersect to shape attitudes toward mental health care in ways that have implications for potential partnerships between churches and mental health care providers.
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Keywords:
pastors; race/ethnicity; mental health; congregations; health care
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Bolger, D.; Prickett, P.J. Where Would You Go? Race, Religion, and the Limits of Pastor Mental Health Care in Black and Latino Congregations. Religions 2021, 12, 1062. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12121062
AMA Style
Bolger D, Prickett PJ. Where Would You Go? Race, Religion, and the Limits of Pastor Mental Health Care in Black and Latino Congregations. Religions. 2021; 12(12):1062. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12121062
Chicago/Turabian StyleBolger, Daniel, and Pamela J. Prickett. 2021. "Where Would You Go? Race, Religion, and the Limits of Pastor Mental Health Care in Black and Latino Congregations" Religions 12, no. 12: 1062. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12121062
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