Black women rising describes the growing influence of Black women in many spheres of life. We discuss Black women’s success in social advocacy and community building but also how historical and cultural conditions in the United States affect their mental health. We provide a rationale for writing, which is to encourage the mental health community to serve Black women well, with a sound understanding of their historical, social, and cultural circumstances.

Black women’s romantic and intimate relationships are explored in both heterosexual and queer unions. We discuss the strengths of Black women’s romantic unions and examine conditions that create stress and distress for Black women in marriage, cohabitation, and sexual and dating relationships. We discuss cultural, structural, and historical dynamics that drive Black women’s relationship stereotypes and challenges. We also address conditions that create unusual relational risks for Black women, including sexually transmitted infections and intimate partner violence.

Strong Black Woman Persona: Mental Health Impacts, discusses the everyday experience of Black women’s penchant to be overcommitted and overburdened in caring for the needs of others. This idea, framed as the Strong Black Woman persona, is a racialized gender performance, a scripted role into which Black women are socialized, beginning in childhood. We discuss the historical, societal, and cultural forces that cause women to internalize Strong Black Woman identities. We also recommend strategies to help Black women move beyond a sense of constant self-sacrifice to prioritizing self-care.

In this chapter, we highlight key approaches to building strong therapeutic relationships with Black female clients. We also review the challenges that therapists may face in building strong therapeutic relationships with Black women and provide strategies to overcome these challenges. We discuss the occurrence of microaggressions in therapy and provide specific strategies for how to frame conversations about micro-aggressions to validate historical and present client experiences both in and outside of therapy.

In this chapter, we review historical and contemporary stereotypes of Black women in America driven by histories of racism, sexism, and classism. We discuss how these stereotypes impact the mental health of Black women as they navigate these stereotypes, which can cause Black women to feel constrained. We provide recommendations to clinicians for supporting Black women in challenging stereotypes and constructing their own authentic identities. This chapter also discusses ways that clinicians might unconsciously hold common stereotypes about Black women and how unexamined stereotypes can affect the therapeutic alliance. We guide readers to examine their biases toward Black women so that they do not unintentionally affect treatment negatively.

This chapter explores the importance of women’s leadership with a focus on community-building activities. The term leadership is examined in relation to sex/gender, feminism, the qualities and styles that align with women’s gendered socialization, gender scripts and worldviews. Using a case example, we illustrate how feminist community leaders might select among six approaches to build trust and optimism in their followership. These frameworks include Transformational leadership, Servant leadership, Collaborative leadership, Innovation leadership, Diversity and Inclusion leadership, and Emotionally Intelligent leadership. Each leadership approach is synergistic with a feminist framework. The chapter discusses how women leaders can draw on these frameworks to maximize their effectiveness. We also discuss strategies to develop women as community leaders with consideration of the unique circumstances and needs of women underprivileged backgrounds.