Seeking Help from Clergy Among Black Caribbeans in the United States Robert Joseph Taylor • Amanda Toler Woodward • Linda M. Chatters • Jacqueline S. Mattis • James S. Jackson Published online: 31 August 2011 Ó Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011 Abstract This study examined use of clergy for serious personal problems within a representative sample of US black Caribbean adults from the National Survey of American Life. Logistic regression analysis was used and confirmed the importance of problem type, church involvement, and nativity as correlates of clergy use. Findings for black Caribbeans indicate similarities, as well as important departures from prior research on the corre- lates of clergy assistance among African Americans. These and other findings confirm the position of black Caribbeans as a distinctive ethnic subgroup within the general black population in the United States. Keywords West Indians Á Afro-Caribbeans Á Ministers Á Religion Á Help-seeking Á Clergy Á Mental health Á African American Á Service utilization Introduction Clergy remain an important but under-researched compo- nent of the mental health delivery system (Mattis et al. 2007; Neighbors et al. 1998; Taylor et al. 2000, 2004; Wang et al. 2003). In addition to standard counseling issues such as marital and family concerns, clergy also counsel individuals who have serious psychiatric disorders and substance abuse problems. In fact, recent evidence indicates that there is no difference between psychiatrists and clergy in the type and severity of disorders that they address (Wang et al. 2003). Persons who are socially marginalized and economically disadvantaged (racial and ethnic minorities, immigrants, lower SES) and have limited access to formal services (i.e., underserved by the mental health sector) are both more likely to be at risk for mental health and substance use problems and may be more likely to approach clergy for mental health concerns (Taylor et al. 2000). The present study investigates the sociodemographic, problem type and religious correlates of clergy use for serious personal problems among Caribbean black Amer- icans in the United States. Overall, there is very little research on the black Caribbean population in the United States. This dearth of research is due, in part, to the rela- tively small size of these groups and a general belief that the black American population is homogenous with respect to ethnicity. Despite a fairly robust ethnographic literature on the immigration experiences of this group (Foner 2005; Waters 1999; Vickerman 2001a, b), little research focuses on their mental and physical health or their utilization of formal services. Accordingly, this paper examines the use of clergy for serious personal problems among black Caribbeans, using data from the National Survey of American Life which includes the first national probability sample of black Caribbeans ever conducted. R. J. Taylor (&) Á L. M. Chatters School of Social Work, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA e-mail: rjtaylor@umich.edu A. T. Woodward School of Social Work, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA L. M. Chatters School of Public Health, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA J. S. Mattis Steinhardt School of Education, New York University, New York, NY, USA J. S. Jackson Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA 123 Race Soc Probl (2011) 3:241–251 DOI 10.1007/s12552-011-9056-0