# Increasing Access To Depression Care For Black Women Survivors Of Intimate Partner Violence

> **NIH NIH K23** · COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY HEALTH SCIENCES · 2024 · $197,035

## Abstract

Black women intimate partner violence (IPV) survivors experience a higher burden of depression.1 IPV is any
physical, sexual, psychological, or financial abuse, and/or controlling behaviors inflicted by a current or former
intimate partner.2 Women bear the brunt of victimization. More than 43 million women in the United States (US)
have experienced IPV in their lifetime.2 Every year 12.5 million women are abused.3 Depression is the leading
cause of disability in the US affecting more than 20% of the population.6,7 Women are nearly twice as likely as
men to suffer from it.8 Black women who are exposed to severe, long-term IPV and are also more likely to suffer
from severe depression.1 Depression is especially harmful for IPV survivors because it undermines a woman’s
ability to safely escape from an abusive partner.10 Depression is especially pernicious for Black women IPV
survivors. Given their race-class-gender intersectionality, they are often misdiagnosed, undertreated, and
experience bias from mental health (MH) providers despite experiencing higher rates of psychological distress.8
Notably, existing and long-standing inequities within the mental healthcare system make it especially difficult for
them to obtain immediate depression care. However, the Black church is a trusted and novel pathway for
providing treatment linkages for depressed community members.14-16 Nearly 80% of Blacks are religiously
affiliated and women are the largest population within the Black church.27 Women clergy are already providing
crisis support for IPV survivors.28,29 They view this as part of their social responsibility to support other women30
although depression is not currently addressed. Notably, there is a dearth of depression care that has been
tailored for Black women IPV survivors in the Black church.36 Current interventions largely omit Black women’s
spirituality, despite their preference for incorporating faith-based practices.23,36 In fact, interventions that infuse
Black IPV survivors' spiritual and religious practices increase the likelihood of treatment adherence and
completion.36 This finding is consistent with cultural norms and reliance upon the Black church as a source of
support that includes healthcare promotion and delivery, sociopolitical organizing, as well as educational and
childcare services.37,38 Given that tailored interventions increase trust and decrease the likelihood of attrition
among this underserved population of survivors in critical need of MH care,26,39 there is an urgent need to tailor
an EBI for Black women IPV survivors with depression in the context of the Black church. In this K23 patient-
oriented application guided by community-partnered participatory research and Waller’s Model,41 I will apply the
ADAPT-ITT Model23 and the PRISM framework48,49 to tailoring and implementing interpersonal counseling
(IPC)21 – a brief, structured version of interpersonal psychotherapy22 designed for nonspecialist settings that
focuses on i...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10887246
- **Project number:** 1K23MH133979-01A1
- **Recipient organization:** COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY HEALTH SCIENCES
- **Principal Investigator:** Bernadine Waller
- **Activity code:** K23 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $197,035
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2024-09-01 → 2029-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10887246

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10887246, Increasing Access To Depression Care For Black Women Survivors Of Intimate Partner Violence (1K23MH133979-01A1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-27 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10887246. Licensed CC0.

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