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Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities have weathered centuries of racism, causing transgenerational mental health consequences and hindering access to quality treatment. In this commentary, we describe the systemic challenges of engaging BIPOC to promote mental health equity during the COVID-19 pandemic. We then describe an initiative that illustrates these strategies, provide recommendations and further readings for academic institutions seeking to partner with community organizations to provide equitable mental health services to populations that have been traditionally overlooked., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.)

Depression among individuals who have been racially and ethnically minoritized in the United States can be vastly different from that of non-Hispanic White Americans. For example, African American adults who have depression rate their symptoms as more severe, have a longer course of illness, and experience more depression-associated disability. The purpose of this review was to conceptualize how structural racism and cumulative trauma can be fundamental drivers of the intergenerational transmission of depression. The authors propose that understanding risk factors for depression, particularly its intergenerational reach, requires accounting for structural racism. In light of the profoundly different experiences of African Americans who experience depression (i.e., a more persistent course of illness and greater disability), it is critical to examine whether an emerging explanation for some of these differences is the intergenerational transmission of this disorder due to structural racism.

Keywords: antiracist research; antioppressive research; social work research; social justice; community engagement EN antiracist research antioppressive research social work research social justice community engagement 637 644 8 01/09/23 20221201 NES 221201 The Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR) created its Research Capacity and Development Committee in 2017 to build research capacity across the careers of social work scholars. In fact, community-engaged scholarship has long been at the heart of social work research, and scholars have rightly called for community-engaged research to be considered the signature methodology of social work (Delavega et al., [6]). Steps Toward Advancing Antiracist and Antioppressive Research Dismantle White Supremacy in Social Work The first step toward defining ARAO research is to describe the activities that have sustained white supremacy in social work research, both as a profession and as individual scholars. Promote Antiracist and Antioppressive Research Methods Social work scholars must also develop and codify research approaches that promote ARAO research methods, such as community-engaged and community-driven research that honors community strengths and capacity. [Extracted from the article]