Della Mosley

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Research Assistant at University of Kentucky

Purpose This article provides mental health professionals with information about the impact of racism and racial trauma on Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC). Mental health professionals are poised to be sources of support and healing for BIPOC that are impacted by racism and racial trauma. However, to best support survivors of racial t...

Anti-Black racism and cissexism have been strong motivators for Black trans and gender diverse (TGD) communities to engage in activism. Furthermore, Black TGD people have been at the forefront of activism movements, yet they rarely receive recognition for their role in disrupting systems of oppression and contributing to the liberation of oppressed...

The negative impact of racism on Black, Indigenous, and People of Color's (BIPOC's) mental and physical health is well-documented. Research supports the critical role of personal hope as a buffer against despair and adverse health outcomes among BIPOC. However, there is a dearth of empirical research exploring the experiences of BIPOC's sense of co...

Black feminism has so much to offer. Its philosophical, intellectual, and activist practice grounded in the experiences of Black women is a source of healing and liberation. Building on the Black feminist tradition, the current article introduces an intersectional and practical healing framework titled Blafemme Healing. The framework is designed to...

For lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) individuals, community and cultural values have served as protective factors during large scale events such as the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the 2016 Orlando Pulse Nightclub massacre. Little is known about how LGBTQ people are drawing on such values during the current COVID-19 epidemic. The cur...

Research has documented the negative mental health outcomes that anti-Black racism and cissexism, respectively, have had on Black and trans and gender-diverse (TGD) people during the COVID-19 pandemic. This research, however, has yet to explore the intersectional experiences of Black TGD young adults. Additionally, research has found that activists...

The importance of preparing counselors to be social justice‐oriented practitioners is established, though there is a need for models of social justice training. In this study, we describe a pilot program of the Social Justice Consultation Corps. We identify the theoretical foundations, describe activities, and present implications for future direct...

In this conceptual article, we assert that psychology should be transformed to adopt the explicit goal of working toward the liberation of people oppressed by society rather than striving for mere equality. To achieve such a transformation, it is necessary to reenvision graduate training in psychology. Graduate training in psychology is an importan...

Background: Transgender Women of Color are more likely to experience oppression at the hands of healthcare providers than their transgender White counterparts. However, there is a paucity of research on the experiences of Latina transgender women in the United States. Aims: Using an intersectionality theory framework, the present study aimed to in...

There is a large body of research on the importance of addressing culture in psychotherapy. However, less is known about providing critically conscious and racially affirmative therapy for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) clients in the context of ongoing systemic racism and racism-related stress and trauma, especially in the sociopol...

Transgender and gender diverse (TGD) youth in the United States are met with systemic barriers that affect their physical and mental health. Recent scholarship has found that TGD youth have been negatively impacted as a result of anti-transgender federal, state, and local laws and bills. Given the crucial role of parental figures in the well-being...

Written against the backdrop of the 2020 twin pandemics of a global health crisis and greater national awareness of structural racism, this article issues a call for psychology to invest in training all psychologists to respond to the social ills of racial and other forms of oppression. We introduce a public psychology for liberation (PPL) training...

Power is enacted to oppress others, pursue wellness, or resist oppression. For Black people, societal and relational oppression influences racialized and gendered expressions of power within sexual encounters. The current study analyzed power dynamics within Black university students' first and most recent sexual encounters. Using narrative inquiry...

Existing research adopting a sex positive and intersectional framework for investigating Black women’s sexualities is scarce. We conducted a 46-year (1972–2018) content analysis of sexualities research focussed on Black women. It sought to examine which sexualities topics were published most; whether the publications aligned with sex-positive, neut...

The negative impacts of racism, including experiences of racial trauma, are well documented (e.g., Bryant-Davis & Ocampo, 2006; Carter, 2007). Because of the deleterious effects of racial trauma on Black people, interventions that facilitate the resistance and prevention of anti-Black racism are needed. Critical consciousness is one such interventi...

Growing research supports the link between individual expressions of hope and psychological well‐being. In this paper, we draw on psychological theories of hope, racial and ethnic studies, and the literature on radical healing to propose a framework of radical hope. Although the proposed multidimensional framework integrates cultural practices of P...

Advancing beyond individual-level approaches to coping with racial trauma, we introduce a new psychological framework of radical healing for People of Color and Indigenous individuals (POCI) in the United States. We begin by providing a context of race and racism in the United States and its consequences for the overall well-being of POCI. We build...

Bi-erasure and color-blind racial ideologies (CBRI) are two systems of oppression that that create barriers to wellness for bisexual+ people of Color and Indigenous People (bi+ POCI) (Elia, 2014; Neville, Awad, Brooks, Flores, & Bluemel, 2013). The authors posited that, for college students, these forms of invisibility may be experienced in campus...

When young adult women and men engage in sexual encounters, the former have significantly fewer orgasms than the latter. This gendered orgasm disparity, often referred to as an orgasm gap, is theorised to be due to a multitude of societal issues. The purpose of this study was to assess whether a Psychology of Human Sexuality university course, whic...

Abortion is often misunderstood and steeped in misinformation. Laypeople and medical professionals tend to have limited abortion knowledge. Among the public, individuals who hold accurate information about abortion are more likely to endorse pro-choice attitudes than individuals who are misinformed. We explored knowledge of, and attitudes toward, a...

A sex-positive lens is needed to investigate Black sexuality, which is often depicted through deficit and risk models. Extant sex research leaves an opportunity to understand Black experiences of sexual pleasure untapped. Using narrative inquiry coupled with constructivist grounded theory methods, we examined 18 Black university students’ last sexu...

Police brutality and widespread systemic racism represent historical and current sources of trauma in Black communities. Both the Black Lives Matter movement and counseling psychology propose to confront these realities at multiple levels. Black Lives Matter seeks to increase awareness about systemic racism and promote resilience among Black people...

Using a sex-positive framework, we conducted a 61-year (1954-2015) content analysis of sexuality research featured in The Counseling Psychologist and the Journal of Counseling Psychology. We aimed to uncover (a) which human sexuality topics were published most, (b) whether the publications aligned with sex-positive, neutral, or negative discourse,...

Despite hip-hop’s popularity, little attention has been paid to its effects on youth gender performances on social media. This study has analyzed how youth who identify with three popular hip-hop songs interpreted the songs’ messages and performed their gender on the social media application Instagram (IG). Posts (N=450) from IG users were examined...

In the United States, Black bisexuals are a diverse group that is comprised of individuals with multiple identities (gender, religious, ethnicity, ability, etc.) who live in areas that provide variable consequences and rewards for possessing those identities (Greene, 1996; Phillips & Stewart, 2010). In a social hierarchy where Blacks and bisexuals...

AND SEXUAL ORIENTATION " Lourdes Dolores Follins and Jonathan Mathias Lassiter offer us a long overdue treatment of Black LGBT health in the United States, one that doesn't shy away from our rich, varied, and intersectional tapestry by equally highlighting all constituents of the LGBT acronym.. .. Black LGBT Health in the United States exalts our g...

Sexual minority and gender expansive youth often experience bullying in schools. However, no study to date has provided school-wide LGBTQ-specific antibullying interventions grounded in current national and state laws and policies, nor the professional ethical responsibilities of school counselors. This literature review describes the context of sc...

The sociocultural context of racism influences the behaviors of Black men and may reflect healthy paranoia (Sue, Capodilupo, & Holder, 2008). No published studies however, have directly examined the sociocultural experiences that influence Black men’s endorsement of paranoid-like behaviors. An online study was conducted with a nonclinical sample of...

Research on Black sexual health often fails to represent the heterogeneity of Black ethnic groups. For people of Caribbean descent in the USA, ethnicity is a salient cultural factor that influences definitions and experiences of sexual health. Most research on people of Caribbean descent focuses on the relatively high rate of STIs, but sexual healt...

Given the current challenges that gender expansive and sexual minority youth face, this chapter highlights the importance of creating inclusive sex education school curricula. The often hostile school environment where gender expansive and sexual minority youth are expected to perform is described, including exposure to curricula that restricts the...

This poster is a description of the evaluation of an ally development workshop using a peer education lay leader model and experiential learning activities to determine its efficacy at increasing awareness of privilege, oppression, and allyship among participants. Results of this brief intervention demonstrated that participants increased their awa...