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When Hair Care Is Self-Care

With her PsychoHairapy practice, Afiya Mbilishaka is tapping into a mental health space often overlooked: Black hair salons

Driadonna Roland
ZORA
Published in
7 min readNov 27, 2019

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Illustration: Monica Ahanonu

IIt’s tradition for the squeals of gleeful gossip to mix with the sizzle of strands being straightened or the buzzing of barbers’ clippers in salons across the world. Think back to the tea you overheard while under the dryer or the secrets you may have spilled in the hours it took to braid your hair.

Now imagine if instead of snap judgment and unsolicited advice — “Girl, what you need to do is…”— the stylist listened and offered resources appropriate to what you were going through. What if she were trained to administer emotional first-aid?

Afiya Mbilishaka, PhD, head of psychology at the University of the District of Columbia and known as Dr. Afiya, is developing a curriculum to this end. Her emerging practice, PsychoHairapy, explores theories related to the psychology of hair and uses hair as an entry point into mental health services. Dr. Afiya founded the PsychoHairapy Research Lab on the campus of Howard University in 2014 and began building a trove of quantitative and qualitative data. For her findings, Dr. Afiya, who is also a natural hairstylist, was named Scholar of the Year by the Association of Black Psychologists this July.

The practice of using salons to “link hair care to self-care,” the tagline of PsychoHairapy, is important to Dr. Afiya.

“Let’s say somebody is choking—you do the Heimlich maneuver. Or if somebody scrapes their knee, you know you have to clean it or put a Band-Aid on. When somebody’s having a panic attack or just lost a loved one, people don’t always know how to respond in an emotionally sensitive way,” Dr. Afiya explains. “You know how you do a training for CPR? It’s that same concept for getting a mental health understanding.”

According to the Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health, African Americans are 10% more likely to experience serious psychological distress. But most Black women who experience this don’t receive mental health services, because the dominant model of delivery is often inaccessible and culturally disengaged, Dr. Afiya writes in her paper “PsychoHairapy: Using Hair as an Entry Point

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ZORA
ZORA

Published in ZORA

A publication from Medium that centers the stories, poetry, essays and thoughts of women of color.

Driadonna Roland
Driadonna Roland

Written by Driadonna Roland

Driadonna is a writer, producer, and host based in Brooklyn. Learn more @Driadonna.com.

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