What Does "Too Blessed To Be Stressed" Really Measure?

Problem and Research Question

“Too Blessed to be Stressed” is an article by Keneshia Bryant, Tiffany Haynes, Nancy Greer-Williams and Mary S. Hartwig (2013). This article is about African American males in a rural faith based community and their perceived experiences with depression. The question the authors are trying to formulate is; is rural faith communities an effective resource in helping African American males with depressive symptoms? The author explained the problem by suggesting that African American men have higher prevalence of depression than their male counterparts due to many societal factors (e.g. poverty, cultural issues, racial discrimination, etc.) Though the author mentioned there is a problem in the African American community, the percentage of this prevalence was not mentioned.

The basic research question the author is asking is “what evidence-based intervention is appropriate for African American males in rural faith based communities based on their views?” The statistic the author provided was 14.8 million people experience depression but the number of African American males experiencing these symptoms is not given. Because this number is not supplied, it hard to know if depression among African American males is a high problem. Also, the author slightly touches on increasing rates of suicide but doesn’t go into much detail about whether this issue in this community leads to incarcerations, addiction, divorce, etc. The research question is very important to social work as it could lead to evidence based practices that could be effective in treating depression among African American males but more information is still needed to explain why it is important. The author talks about this problem being a major health issue among African American males. I didn’t detect any bias in the research at all because they supported their reasoning with literature reviews.

Literature Review

The literature review listed in this research is relevant to the study. For example, there are articles that measure depression in African American males and articles that speak about religion and heath connections in the church. The literature is logically sequenced and follows a good flow to each topic that is being discussed. During the introduction, the author gives background information about the research topic and follows each point with literature reviews that focus on how depression is perceived and the different symptoms as well as reasoning behind the perceptions. Later in the discussion, the authors talk about their findings for the research and follow it with information that was previously studied and how their findings did not fit the previous research.

          The authors follow a positivist paradigm as they believe if we understand the experiences of African American males in the rural faith community and how they perceive depression, then we can develop interventions that could tackle the health based issue that is faced among these individuals. A feminist view can also be seen in this research because masculinity and gender roles are examined closely. This feminist view was very important to the research as it explained the perception that many African American males are taught “boys don’t cry or show their emotions” thus explains some reasoning why these men are holding in their depression or denying it all together.

          Some of the literature can be seen as outdated and needs to be reexamined because it is 10 to 20 years old. This can have a significant impact on the accuracy of the information presented. Some information could have changed as of today. There does appear to be more recent information included as well.

          It was almost unclear if a theoretical framework is presented in this research because there are many different thoughts and information being presented. The only time I saw a theory being mentioned was when the authors mentioned past researchers wanting certain standard interventions to help African American males who suffer from depression cope by using their faith and prayer. Not much literature review is presented in this theoretical framework. More information to back up this theory needs to be explored. 

          The nominal definitions used in this research was presented by those participating in the study. Depression was defined as either stuck, unable to move or down (Bryant,  Haynes, Greer-Williams & Hartwig, 2013). The author needed to provide more clear cut nominal definition for depression in the study. Another nominal definition used was denial of depression, a clear cut definition was used to show what categorizes as denial. Lastly, masculine roles didn't have a clear cut definition. Though this measure is assumed to be understood by the reader, more information on what gender roles and masculine roles are needed. 

Hypotheses and Measurement

The study presented is exploratory and the study is qualitative. The one hypotheses that appeared to be stated is faith based interventions for depression could possibly form based on different perceptions of faith based African American males. No other clear cut hypotheses were stated as this research was just exploring perceptions of depression within the given population. The independent variable is African American males and the dependent variable is perception of depression experiences. Other variables the author felt was important is age, marital status, education, employment, household income and denomination. The only variable that seemed to be mentioned as a factor in the research is household income as this variable was mentioned as a cause of depressive symptoms. Not very many operational definitions are used for the variables. The ones measured are the three different cohort categories used, the religious categories used, the age range, and the different themes used to measure the categories. It is also mentioned that coding and definitions were used as a standard to test the validity of each category being measured. The variables are measured through self-reporting and questions.

Summary of Critique

The author covers the background information but still has some limitations with this aspect as well. The actual results seem to be problematic. Each theme talks about what is being measured but there are one or two transcripts mentioned per theme and it doesn’t seem to show any further statistics on how many individuals shared these views per cohort. It doesn’t state whether specific questions were asked to each individual in each cohort or was it just simply dialogue.

For future studies, I would suggest the author make the population more representative of a rural faith community as they had a very small sample. Next, since this study focuses on African American Males, make the gender population even or explain if there is a comparison between men and women as this doesn’t seem to mentioned. Also there needs to be more individuals who do not identify as pastors or parishioners in order to back of the claim that faith based interventions may be beneficial. The leaders such as pastors and parishioners are those individuals who would be providing the services.

This article does contribute to research as it gives us an idea of the thought process of faith based African Americans and their experiences with Depression. It does show that there is a strong cultural disconnect with mental illness and those who should seek treatment.

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References

Bryant, K., Haynes. T., Greer-Williams, N., & Hartwig, S., M. (2013). Too blessed to be stressed: A rural faith community’s views of African American males and depression. Journal of Religion and Health, 53, 796-808. doi: 10.1007/s10943-012-9672-z