Cultivating Homeplaces for Black Girls to Be Well

Written by: Sofía Burstin
Edited by: Shantina Washington

For our first edition of the Black Joy Community Series for 2024, we had the opportunity and honor of hearing from Angela Patton, founder of Camp Diva Leadership Academy and CEO of Girls for A Change. Angela Patton is an accomplished advocate of Black girl's healing and healthy development. One of her many accomplishments includes co-producing a documentary, Daughters, which was nominated last month at the Sundance Festival. The documentary won the Favorite Award at the festival and is now on Netflix. The documentary showcases the importance of father-daughter dances between Black girls and their fathers, focusing on incarcerated fathers. Her work not only showcases her commitment to Black girls but also to her community.

Fostering Community to Support Young Black Girls

Angela Patton was born and raised in Virginia, where she currently resides. She decided to stay because she wanted to give her community and Black girls a chance to thrive and feel validated. Angela started a non-profit organization to help Black girls be seen, heard, and celebrated. She wanted to build a community where Black girls have safe spaces to be themselves. Her inspiration to build Girls For a Change was also inspired by a conversation she had with a young Black girl from her community. The young girl shared that her dad was incarcerated. The trauma of her father’s incarceration caused her to become an adult at a very young age (10 years old). This story inspired Angela to facilitate father-daughter dances for Black girls with incarcerated fathers. When the young girl was 15, she later spoke to Angela and stated, “I realize now how important Girls for a Change and my parents' efforts are. With my father back home, I see the true value of organizations like Girls for a Change in my life”. This story has a very powerful message, as it reflects the work Angela Patton has done throughout her career and is a reflection that these spaces are necessary for the growth, development, and safety of young Black girls. After hearing Angela recount this story, Paul Harris, who is part of the Black Youth Mental Health Initiative grant team and dad of a little Black girl, shared his thoughts about the impact of Angela’s work with the audience. He said, “his daughter is a completely different person since she joined Camp Diva Leadership”, he thanked Angela Patton for creating these spaces for Black girls to thrive.

Understanding the State of Black Girl Mental Health

Dr. Lauren Mims and undergraduate student Asa Ohalete led the group into further discussion on the state of Black girls' mental health. Dr. Mims, whose current research focuses on the ability of Black children to learn and develop amidst the normativity of racial discrimination in their everyday life experiences, speaks about the barriers that keep Black girls from receiving the support they need and provides insightful statistics about the suicide rate amongst Black youth. Dr. Mims mentioned that the rate of suicide for Black youth ages 5-12 has increased by 73%, making Black youth ages 5-12 twice as likely to die by suicide when compared to other ethnic-racial groups. Dr. Mims makes us aware that there is an alarming situation happening in policy education. There is a gap in understanding both the antecedents, the prevention strategies, and the intervention strategies for suicide risk, especially when referencing Black girls who experience the impact of living in an intersectional oppressive system. Mims highlights how essential it is to know the statistics of suicide rates to effect and create policy change. When policies and advocates focus on Black girls they must look at all the environmental layers of the person's experience.

Dr. Mims' goal in combating inept research and policies on Black girls is to freedom dream with Black children and their families and use their brilliance to guide the development of new research policies, practices, and narratives. Dr. Mims mentions, it would be helpful to consider family values, school experiences, and the community each person navigates when developing solutions to help Black girls gain mental stability. Additionally, we need to consider what these little girls are seeing in the media and internalizing about being a Black girl and the impact it has on their self-definition. Dr. Mims and Asa close by presenting different strategies for supporting black girls' mental health.

Strategies to Support Black Girl's Mental Health:

Provide Black girls with space at home, in school, or in the community to journal. Have them write positive statements, and co-write stories with other Black girls to create empowerment between each other by talking about their strengths.
Create safe spaces for Black girls like support groups, Black girl clubs, or extracurricular activity clubs where they can build a community of their own.
Implement grounding exercises, such as breathing, moving your body, singing, and yoga.
Represent Black girls in every ecosystem (macrosystem, microsystem, exosystem, mesosystem, chronosystem)
Encourage family connection by spending time together, discussing family values, sharing personal experiences that open a line of communication, and validating their feelings by letting them know they are not alone in the situation they are in.
Utilize a socio-ecological/cultural framework when working with Black girls.
Provide culturally responsive care that supports the community.
Mental health professionals can create a collectivistic and/or interconnected approach to treatment for a more comfortable clinical environment that serves the systemic factors that Black girls live in.