Social Capital As a Relational Pathway to Help-Seeking: Black Students' Perspectives on Mental Health Support and Racial Trauma Healing

Background and Purpose:

Black students at both Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Predominately White Institutions (PWIs) have encountered racism within the greater society and even online. The accumulation of these experiences can hurt the mental health of Black students, and, in more difficult situations, may lead to signs of racial trauma. As a result, Black students may rely on social capital on campus to foster a supportive environment for healing and to overcome barriers to seeking mental health support. This paper extends social capital theory by outlining the qualitative interpersonal and institutional conditions of social networks that serve as pathways to healing and help-seeking.

Methods:

A qualitative, grounded theory methodology was used to examine the impact of racial trauma, the role of social networks and support systems, and institutional factors influencing help-seeking behavior based on Black students' experiences at HBCUs and PWIs. Definitions of social capital in the context of racial trauma and mental health help-seeking were explored, alongside their conceptualization of healing from racial trauma, and the influence of institutional settings on mental health help-seeking behaviors. Race-Based Traumatic Stress (RBTS), Social Capital, and the Integrative Behavior Model of Mental Health Help-Seeking (IBM-HS) collectively offer a theoretical lens to delineate the intersection of racial trauma and mental health help-seeking behaviors.

Five focus groups and ten semi-structured interviews (N = 28) were conducted with Black Generation Z and Millennial college students (ages 18 to 44). Focus groups examined how Black students define social capital and healing. Semi-structured interviews sought to gain deeper insights into the mental health concerns and help-seeking practices of Black students.

Results:

Findings reveal that Black students’ conceptualization of social capital is a culturally grounded, relational, and moral practice. Contextualized by racism and liberation from oppression, Black social capital is oriented towards collective uplift, rather than individual advancement. Participants described healing as continuous and communal processes rooted in connection, belonging, spirituality, and mutual recognition. Racism emerged as a pervasive etiology of trauma across both institutional types. As a result, networks were identified as fractured, and trust was constrained, particularly at PWIs.

This paper identifies Healing Pathways to Help-Seeking, which is a relational mechanism that supports students in moving towards formal mental health help-seeking. Rather than individual decision-making behaviors, help-seeking was activated through relational prompting. These empirical insights support the development of the emergent grounded theory, Healing Capital. Healing Capital reflects the restorative, cultural, and relational capacities embedded within networks that foster safety, validation, meaning-making, and healing in the aftermath of racial trauma. This framework extends social capital theory by shifting from a transactional and resource accumulation focus to centering relational, trauma-informed, culturally grounded restoration.

Conclusion and Implications:

Implications include the need for institutional accountability for racialized harm, trauma-informed relational practices in higher education, and culturally and relationally grounded mental health outreach interventions. Healing Capital offers a theoretical model for understanding how oppressed communities, within the context of chronic racial stress, cultivate healing and help-seeking.