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Biography
Donte Bernard is an Assistant Professor and licensed clinical psychologist at the National Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center (NCVC) at the Medical University of South Carolina. He earned his PhD in Clinical Psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and completed his clinical internship at University of Miami School of Medicine Mailman Center for Child Development. He completed a NIMH funded T32 Postdoctoral Fellowship at the NCVC.
Dr. Bernard’s program of research seeks to understand how and why racism-related stress and trauma shape psychological and behavioral health outcomes among Black youth and emerging adults. He is also interested in understanding the processes by which culturally relevant protective factors promote resilience and positive psychological wellbeing in the face of racism-related adversity. His research leverages both quantitative and qualitative methods to validate the lived experiences of Black communities by inserting their voices, perspectives, and experiences into scholarly spaces that have otherwise been exclusionary. To this end, Dr. Bernard was recently awarded an early career development award from NIMHD to elucidate the extent to which culturally relevant mechanisms shape and explain the association between racism-related trauma and mental health outcomes among Black adolescents. Ultimately, the goal of his research is to inform the development and modification of culturally informed interventions to promote positive psychological adjustment across sensitive developmental periods.