What the Research Said, And What I Already Knew in My Body

Let me introduce myself the way I actually am, not the way a bio page would have you believe.

I am a licensed therapist, a doctoral candidate, a faith leader, and a Black woman who has sat across from enough other Black women to know that something is deeply, persistently wrong, and that the systems designed to help us have mostly looked the other way. I built a practice, The Fruited Life, out of that conviction. I launched a consulting firm, Stacy McCall-Martin Consulting LLC, out of that same fire. And I wrote a research paper, a scoping review to be precise, because I needed the data to say out loud what my clients, my community, and my own body have been telling me for years.

This is where I will share that work. Welcome to the first entry.

The Question I Had to Ask

For my doctoral qualifying examination at California Baptist University, I was tasked with producing a piece of original scholarly inquiry. For some people, that might mean picking a topic. For me, it meant finally giving academic language to something I had been watching unfold in real time in therapy rooms, church hallways, and community spaces across Southern California.

The question I asked was this: Which Christian faith-integrated mindfulness interventions exist to reduce stress in Black women?

That question did not come from a textbook. It came from years of watching extraordinarily capable, deeply faithful, chronically exhausted Black women hold everything together for everyone and then quietly fall apart in the one room where they did not have to perform. It came from knowing, clinically and personally, that the tools most often offered to this population were not designed with them in mind. Secular mindfulness programs built for and studied in predominantly white clinical samples. Stress reduction frameworks that treat the body as the primary unit of analysis and leave the spirit entirely out of the room. Recommendations for "diverse populations" that mean Black people broadly and Black women specifically almost never.

I needed to know what existed. And I needed the research to tell me.

What the Research Found

I conducted a systematic scoping review, a method designed to map the landscape of a topic, identify what is there, and just as importantly, identify what is not. I searched multiple academic databases, screened 32 articles, and after applying rigorous inclusion and exclusion criteria, 10 studies met eligibility for review.

Ten.

In a country of more than 22 million Black women. With a population where 80% identify as Christian, 60% attend church weekly, and only 12% seek mental health treatment despite a depression prevalence that research has clocked at approximately 60%. Ten studies.

And of those ten, not one was designed exclusively for Black women. Black women appeared in these studies as subsets. As majorities within samples that were never built around them. As the population most represented but least centered.

Here is where it gets complicated, because the news is not all heavy. In every study where Christian faith was meaningfully integrated into a mindfulness-based approach, the outcomes were positive. Feasible to implement. Acceptable to participants. Effective in improving stress-related outcomes across physical, psychological, and spiritual domains. The studies that took place in Black church settings showed the highest rates of engagement. The interventions that used scripture, prayer, and pastoral involvement as clinical tools produced results that standard secular programs have not been able to replicate with this population.

The tools work. They just barely exist.

What That Means

I want to be careful here, because I am a researcher and I know what a scoping review can and cannot claim. What it can claim is a map. And this map shows a population that is chronically stressed, spiritually grounded, largely Christian, and disproportionately underserved by the very field that is supposed to reduce their suffering.

The near-absence of Christian faith-integrated mindfulness interventions designed specifically for Black women is not a minor literature gap. It is a structural failure. It is what happens when research priorities are set by people who do not see us as a subject worth studying on our own terms.

I have been in the room. I have watched a woman finally exhale after someone named the Superwoman Schema out loud for the first time, and she recognized herself in every dimension of it. I have watched the same woman look confused when a clinician suggested a secular mindfulness app with a white woman's voice guiding her through a body scan. The tools are not neutral. The absence of the right tools is not neutral either.

What Comes Next

This research did not end with the qualifying examination. It became the foundation of Selah & Abide, a faith-integrated mindfulness psychoeducational group for Black women that I piloted at The View Church in Menifee, California in the spring of 2026. It is becoming a journal article, currently under revision for submission to the Journal of Black Psychology. It is the scholarly core of my doctoral work, which culminates in a defense on July 7, 2026.

I

f you are a clinician who wants to go deeper now, I am facilitating a continuing education workshop on July 11, 2026, titled Christian Faith-Integrated Mindfulness with Black Women Clients, hosted through the DEAR Project. Three CE hours, online, and built directly from this research. You can register at bit.ly/4vbcQxv.

And it is the reason this blog exists.

I started Stacy McCall-Martin Consulting LLC because I believe that research should travel beyond the dissertation, beyond the peer-reviewed journal, into the hands of the practitioners, faith leaders, and community members who are already doing the work and deserve to know what the evidence says. This space is where that translation happens.

If You Are Reading This

If you are a clinician working with Black women and you have been searching for something more culturally congruent than what your training gave you, you are in the right place.

If you are a faith leader who already knows that your congregation is holding stress that the pulpit alone cannot heal, you are in the right place.

If you are a Black woman who has been strong for so long that you have forgotten what it feels like to not be, you are especially, specifically, in the right place.

The research says the tools can work. My life's work is making sure they exist, are accessible, and are built with you in mind from the very beginning.

Stick around. There is more to come.

Stacy McCall-Martin is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT #53584), DSW Candidate at California Baptist University, and founder of Stacy McCall-Martin Consulting LLC. Her work sits at the intersection of clinical practice, scholarly research, and faith-integrated care for Black women. For speaking engagements, consulting inquiries, or continuing education opportunities, contact her at stacymccallmartin.com.