Chapter 4: Ubuntu: A Framework for African American Male Positive Mental Health

Defining healthy mental functioning in Black males has been a major challenge for the field of psychology. African American males are disparately underrepresented in measures of healthy outcomes relative to other ethnicities in the population, and often underutilize access to health services. Racial and cultural explanations are typically offered to explain these negative patterns. Yet, prevailing models in clinical psychology inadequately address conditions of healthy functioning for the African American male. The paucity of conceptual models that expound on the experiences of African males requires much needed exploration from a different paradigm.

Ubuntu (uu-Boon-too), a positive mental health framework emanating out of an African worldview, addresses this deficiency in clinical psychology. It structures the behavioral expression of African American males’ personality, wellness, and competency through its focus on African-centered connectedness, competency, and consciousness (Wilson, 2012; Wilson & Williams, 2013). It has the potential to inform clinicians’, counselors’, and therapists’ practice of proper clinical assessment and intervention methods for African American males. In this chapter, the authors will contribute to the current body of psychological and or clinical research by establishing Ubuntu’s impact on mental health functioning, and they will provide a contextual framework for assessment and intervention practices with African American males.