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African American women survivors of intimate partner violence are disproportionately murdered and help-seeking is a critical variable to examine as it relates to it. There is an urgent need to develop culturally salient interventions that center African American women's ways of knowing. An initial step to doing so is identifying how they employ their sense of individual agency during help-seeking. This paper reflects findings from a study designed to do just that. We conducted 30 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with women who self-identified as African American. Constructivist grounded theory methodology was employed. Constructed agency emerged from the data. This nascent theory explicates four phases of African American women survivors' help-seeking: resistance, persistence, rejection, and resignation. Constructed agency provides practitioners and researchers with a theoretical model to examine African American women's nuanced help-seeking efforts when seeking informal supports and interventions from formal providers.

African American women survivors of intimate partner violence disproportionately experience homicide due, in part, to the racism and racial discrimination they experience during their help-seeking process. Yet, existing scholarship neglects to examine how this multiply-marginalized population of women navigate sociocultural barriers to obtain crisis services and supports from the domestic violence service provision system. Fundamental to developing culturally-salient interventions is more fully understanding their help-seeking behavior. We conducted 30 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with women who self-identified as African American. Constructivist grounded theory methodology was employed. Sensitizing concepts from the Transtheoretical Model of Change and Intersectionality theories, along with Agency framework were conceptually bound. The Theory of Help-Seeking Behavior emerged from the data. This nascent theory provides practitioners and researchers with a theoretical model to examine African American women's nuanced help-seeking efforts.

Objectives: African American women are disproportionately impacted by intimate partner violence (IPV)-related homicide. They reflect the second highest prevalence rates and experience the highest rates of murder resulting from IPV victimization. Although most survivors note that they have experienced rejection and anticipatory stigma as barriers to their help seeking, African American women additionally experience racism and racial discrimination as obstacles that may further preclude their help seeking. This systematic review highlights African American women's experiences of rejection from providers and the effects that it may have upon their ability to secure urgent aid. Method: A dearth of literature examines the subtle ways that African American women survivors experience rejection resulting from the interlocking nature of race, class, and gender oppression. Fundamental to developing more culturally salient interventions is more fully understanding their help-seeking experiences. A systematic review was conducted to provide a critical examination of the literature to understand the intersections of IPV and help-seeking behavior among African American women. A total of 85 empirical studies were identified and 21 were included in the systematic review. The review illuminates both the formal and semiformal help-seeking pathways. Results: We recommend integrating anti-Blackness racist praxis, incorporating African American women's ways of knowing and centralizing their needs in an effort to improve the health and well-being of this population. Conclusions: Eliminating barriers to more immediately accessing the domestic violence service provision system is key to enhance social work practice, policy, and research with African American female survivors of IPV. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]