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Introduction: Public discussions in the media (e.g., social media and reality shows) about Black women's mental health have become more common. Notably, celebrities have become more vocal about their own mental health challenges and sought to normalize seeking care. This study aimed to gain a better understanding of Black women's: (1) past and current causes of stress, anxiety, and depression, and coping skills used; (2) their attitudes and perceptions toward mental health and receiving mental health treatment; and (3) times in their life they felt anxious or depressed, and what type of support or resources would have been helpful to have access to. Methods: Focus groups were conducted with 20 women (mean age 36.6 years, SD 17.8 years), with 5 participants per group. Descriptive qualitative content analysis of the focus group transcripts was conducted. Results: Results consistently showed that intersectional identities of being both Black and a woman resulted in feelings of both hypervisibility and invisibility, representation matters when it comes to mental health providers, an increased openness to therapy across age groups, and a willingness to try digital health tools (e.g., smartphone app) for mental health needs. There is still work to be done to normalize mental health treatment among Black women. Discussion: Subgroups within the community (e.g., young adults) have less stigma around mental health and are acting as catalysts for change. Intentional inclusion of Black women in mental health research and evolving treatment paradigms is important to eliminate inequities in access to culturally relevant mental health care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this study was to pilot test newly developed personalized imagery procedures to investigate the impact of racial stress on alcohol craving and emotional and physiological response in Black adults with alcohol use disorder (AUD). Twenty Black adults (45% women, mean age =37.05, SD age =13.19) with AUD participated in two sessions. In the first, participants described a stressful personal event involving their race and a neutral relaxing situation and these descriptions were used to develop scripts for the subsequent laboratory exposure session. The second session was an experimental provocation session in which participants reported on alcohol craving and emotional response before and after imagined exposure to stress and neutral conditions using personalized racial stress and neutral/relaxing scripts. Conditions were randomized and counterbalanced across subjects, and heart rate and blood pressure were assessed before and after each image. Alcohol craving and negative emotions significantly increased, and positive emotions decreased following the racial stress script relative to the neutral/relaxing script. We found no differences in physiological response. Exploratory analyses found that increase in alcohol craving was correlated with racial identity exploration but not racial identity commitment, men reported greater reductions in anger than women in the neutral condition only, and income was correlated with fear in the racial stress condition only. This study provides evidence that personalized racial stress procedures elicit a stress response and increases alcohol craving and emotional response but not physiological response among Black adults with AUD. These findings warrant replication in a larger study. • Racial stress is associated with increased alcohol use among Black adults. • Laboratory designs can inform the impact of racial stress on alcohol craving. • We conducted a pilot study of 20 Black adults with alcohol use disorder. • Personalized racial stress increased alcohol craving and negative emotionality. • This study should be replicated utilizing a larger sample. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]