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Over the past forty years, mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) have been developed to address a range of physical and mental health issues. Whereas existing research supports the effectiveness of MBIs among predominately White samples, there is less evidence of the efficacy of MBIs among racially and ethnically minoritized groups, including African Americans. To address this limitation in the literature, this article will briefly discuss available empirical research on MBIs with African American populations, as well as recommendations for ways in which MBIs may be modified and adapted for African Americans. In addition, a group-based intervention that integrates these best-practice recommendations and was developed for use with participants from a Protestant Black Church is presented; additional proposals for cultural adaptations of MBIs with Black Christian communities are underscored. We conclude by providing suggestions for future considerations and research.
Many modern approaches to mindfulness or mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) stem from the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn, the founder of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR; Kabat-Zinn, 1982). MBSR was initially developed to address issues of chronic pain, but the development of MBIs has proliferated over the past forty years and been utilized to address myriad physical (e.g., sleep quality; Ong & Smith, 2019) and mental (e.g., depression; Shallcross & Spruill, 2018) health issues. Despite this proliferation, our understanding of the best practices and effectiveness of MBIs with racially and ethnically minoritized communities, including African American and Black communities, remains extremely limited (Woods-Giscombé & Gaylord, 2014). To address this limitation in the literature, this article will (a) briefly highlight available empirical work on MBIs with African American populations, (b) discuss considerations outlined in the extant literature on the ways in which MBIs may be modified and adapted for African Americans, and (c) provide a case example of a group-based intervention that was developed for use with participants from a Protestant Black Church in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States (U.S.). Our purpose in the present article is to illustrate how mental health practitioners might effectively engage an MBI with this population using best recommended practices. As Black communities continue to be plagued by mental health disparities and social injustices (e.g., Watson-Singleton et al., 2019), identifying widely accessible practices (like MBIs) that promote health and well-being is a critical public health...