The Social Environmental Context of Resilience Among Substance-Using African American/Black Men Who Have Sex With Men

ABSTRACT

Resilience theory has been suggested as a framework for research on HIV prevention among men who have sex with men. Among this population, literature indicates that African American/Black men who have sex with men experience additional health disparities including elevated HIV incidence rates, victimization, and poor physical health. Conceptualizing resilience as a part of one’s social environment, this qualitative study investigates resilience processes and HIV transmission risk among a sample of 21 substance-using African American/Black men who have sex with men. Data from in-depth interviews describe the social environmental context in which resilience is exhibited and document the influence of homophobia, expressions of agency, and access to social, economic, and cultural capital on resilience processes. Central to this are expressions of hidden resilience, in which African American/Black men who have sex with men mitigate risk and experience their lives as subjectively successful, whether or not outsiders see it as such.

KEYWORDS:

• African American
• men who have sex with men
• resilience
• substance use
• HIV
• MSM
• qualitative

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by an Early Career Investigator award from the Center for Applied Research on Substance Use and Health Disparities and DHHS Grant Number 5 R01 DA024579 from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The content is solely the responsibility of the author and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institute on Drug Abuse or the National Institutes of Health.