Karen Fraser Wyche

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Karen Fraser Wyche is a clinical psychologist and research professor at George Washington University School of Nursing. Her work focuses on how gender roles develop, how minority women cope with stress, building community resilience, and making intervention programs culturally competent. She also works to increase opportunities for minority women in academia by addressing barriers to their participation.

Education and career
Wyche earned a BA in political science from Adelphi University, an MSW from the University of Maryland, and a PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Missouri. She has held faculty roles at Brown University and the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center before joining George Washington University.

Current role
She is a Research Professor in the Department of Community, Population and Systems (within the GWU nursing faculty). Wyche is a Fellow of multiple APA divisions: the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (Division 9), the Society of Clinical Psychology (Division 12), and the Society for the Psychology of Women (Division 35).

Awards and honors
Wyche received the Sue Rosenberg Zalk Award for Distinguished Service to the Society for the Psychology of Women in 2009 and the Carolyn Wood Sherif Award in 2012. In 2017, she became an Honorary Member of Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing.

Publications and contributions
She co-edited the volume Women’s Ethnicities: Journeys Through Psychology and served as an associate editor of the APA Handbook of the Psychology of Women.

Research focus and examples
Wyche studies the experiences of African-American women, their mental health, and how social and cultural factors affect their lives. She has explored feminist therapy, which aims to empower women by recognizing social and cultural influences on their lives. In one study, she analyzed women’s reflections from group therapy to better understand their perspectives as women.

She also examined media portrayals of welfare recipients with colleagues Heather Bullock and Wendy R. Williams, finding that media often fails to explain poverty and its causes in context.

Wyche has used narrative methods and interviews to tell the life stories of women living with HIV and of Hurricane Katrina survivors. In a project on community resilience in workforce communities serving Katrina survivors, she interviewed 90 first responders. The study identified resilience strategies such as a shared organizational identity, mutual support, shared leadership, flexible roles, active problem solving, and self-reflection.

Background
Wyche grew up in Harlem, New York City, where powerful women inspired her interest in feminism. She began her higher education with a BA in political science, then worked with a YMCA after-school program for girls before pursuing graduate study.