scholarly journals Interpersonal violence and mental health: a social justice framework to advance research and practice

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
Author(s):  
W.A. Tol
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Interpersonal Violence ◽  
Global Mental Health ◽  
Research And Practice ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Special Series ◽  
Conceptual Clarity ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Social Justice Theory

Abstract This editorial paper accompanies a special series in the journal Global Mental Health focused on the topic of interpersonal violence and mental health. This series included 24 papers reporting on data from 31 countries, published between 2017 and 2019. This accompanying paper provides a short summary of findings in the special series and reflects on next steps in research and practice. Collectively, the series’ 24 papers suggest intricate bi-directional relationships between interpersonal violence and mental health, situated in particular contexts and varying across the life course. In order to study this complexity, an overarching theoretical framework is critical. This paper takes the social justice theory developed by Powers and Faden (2006, 2019) as a starting point. It is argued that application of this social justice framework will be helpful to: strengthen conceptual clarity; provide a sense of direction for research and practice in the area of interpersonal violence and mental health; assist in conducting more fine grained analyses of contextually determined processes of disadvantage; and help situate disciplinary specific research and practice questions in their broader context, thereby strengthening multi-disciplinary research and multi-sectoral policy and programming efforts.

scholarly journals Social Justice Training in Action: A Counseling Psychologist's Role in a Police-Mental Health Collaborative Serving Disadvantaged Youth

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 13-31
Author(s):  
James G Barrett ◽  
Chad D Olle
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Juvenile Justice System ◽  
Safety Net ◽  
Community Collaboration ◽  
Agents Of Change ◽  
Social Justice Theory ◽  
And Training

Training programs in counseling psychology have endeavored to integrate social justice into their curricula and prepare their graduates to be agents of change in their communities (Goodman et al., 2004). However, there is too often a disconnect between social justice theory and training and how these principles are actualized in the community (Beer, Spanierman, Greene, and Todd, 2012). Using a case study of a counseling psychologist’s role in developing and administering Safety Net, a police-mental health collaborative to reduce youth contact with the juvenile justice system, this paper provides an example of a counseling psychologist engaged in a community collaboration and systems advocacy (Lewis, Arnold, House and Toporek, 2002) as integrated parts of his roles as therapist, consultant, and advocate. The authors present the case as an iterative, step-by-step process which can serve as a practical example for professionals and trainees working to translate theory into practice.

The poison in the cure: Neoliberalism and contemporary movements in mental health

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (5) ◽  
pp. 669-683 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Cosgrove ◽  
Justin M. Karter
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Global Mental Health ◽  
Mental Health Research ◽  
Health Interventions ◽  
Simultaneous Increase ◽  
Research And Practice ◽  
Mental Health Interventions ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
Health Field

Neoliberalism reaches beyond economic policy and material conditions and reformulates the subject and psychological life and therefore is best understood as an attitude toward science, knowledge making, and subjectivity. In a neoliberal climate, markets give us truth and individuals are encouraged to be self-concerned agents rather than members of a polis. Thus, at the very moment that neoliberal policies transfer responsibility to individuals, there is a simultaneous increase in surveillance in order to reinstall certain patterns of human behavior. Mental health research and practice risk becoming commodities dedicated to enforcing this logic. In this article, we explore medical neoliberalism in some of its recent manifestations: global mental health interventions, routine depression screening, and the monitoring of social media to assess mental health. We also consider the ways in which popular reforms in the mental health field are founded on neoliberal assumptions and may be abetting these ideological aims.

Wanted a New Conceptual Framework for Doing Psychology in India

2019 ◽  
pp. 219-245
Author(s):  
U. Vindhya
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Social Inequalities ◽  
Critical Psychology ◽  
Research And Practice ◽  
The Public ◽  
Perspective Drawing ◽  
The Social ◽  
Psychology Perspective

Addressing the social inequalities and their influences on behaviour and striving for work towards a change in institutions and systems that perpetuate injustice and inequities implies a commitment to a social justice agenda. It is this commitment and the research and practice it seeks to generate that can be termed as the public psychology perspective. It pursues the quest for social change by an ethic that emphasizes distributive justice and human rights and advocates for policies that maximize the accessibility of resources to the disenfranchised and disempowered sections of society in particular. This chapter focusses on the tenets of the public psychology perspective, drawing on the tradition of critical psychology and covers the efforts currently underway exemplified by this perspective, drawn from the fields of mental health and education.

scholarly journals Towards a Social Justice Framework of Mental Health Recovery

2012 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marina Morrow ◽  
Julia Weisser
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Mental Distress ◽  
Mental Health Recovery ◽  
The Political ◽  
Structural Factors ◽  
Methodological Framework ◽  
Research And Practice ◽  
Current Context

In this paper we set out the context in which experiences of mental distress occur with an emphasis on the contributions of social and structural factors and then make a case for the use of intersectionality as an analytic and methodological framework for understanding these factors. We then turn to the political urgency for taking up the concept of recovery and argue for the importance of research and practice that addresses professional domination of the field, and that promotes ongoing engagement and dialogue about recovery as both a personal and social experience. To this end, we describe a unique project that sought to deepen our understanding of how recovery is being thought about and applied in the current context of mental health care in Vancouver, BC, with a specific focus on how, and whether, people are taking up and addressing dimensions of power that we see as critical to the operationalization of recovery within a social justice framework. Emerging from our research and discussion is a set of critical questions about whether or not the political moment in Canada with respect to re-invigorating recovery should be embraced, versus a rejection of the concept of recovery as too limiting in its scope and too vulnerable to professional co-optation. 

Challenges for implementing a global mental health agenda in Brazil: The “silencing” of culture

2019 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francisco Ortega ◽  
Leandro David Wenceslau
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Cultural Competence ◽  
Global Mental Health ◽  
Public Mental Health ◽  
Research And Practice ◽  
Health Initiatives ◽  
Public Mental Health Care ◽  
Health Field ◽  
Health Agenda

Since its emergence in 2007, Global Mental Health has been a growing and polemic area of study, research and practice in mental health worldwide. Despite having a significant endogenous academic production and innovative policy experiences, the Brazilian mental health field and its actors make few references to, and scarcely dialogue with, the Global Mental Health agenda. This article explores an aspect of this divergence between Global Mental Health initiatives and public mental health care in Brazil regarding the role of culture within mental health policies and practices. Our hypothesis is that part of this difficulty can be attributed to the low relevance of the cultural dimension for the Brazilian mental health field, here referred to as the “silencing of culture.” We examine the possible historical roots of this process with reference to theories of “anthropophagy” and “cultural uniformity” in the context of Brazilian cultural matrices. We then describe two recent experiences in public mental health care that incorporate cultural competence through the work of community health workers and the example of community therapy. We argue that the development of cultural competence can be decisive in enabling an improved dialogue between research and practice in Brazilian mental health and global mental health initiatives.

scholarly journals The hermeneutics of recovery: Facilitating dialogue between African and Western mental health frameworks

2021 ◽  
pp. 136346152110005
Author(s):  
Camillia Kong ◽  
Megan Campbell ◽  
Lily Kpobi ◽  
Leslie Swartz ◽  
Caesar Atuire
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Global Mental Health ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Biomedical Model ◽  
Diagnostic Categories ◽  
Faith Based ◽  
Constructive Dialogue ◽  
Conceptual Clarity ◽  
Health Practitioners

The widespread use of faith-based and traditional healing for mental disorders within African contexts is well known. However, normative responses tend to fall within two camps: on one hand, those oriented towards the biomedical model of psychiatry stress the abuses and superstition of such healing, whilst critics adopting a more ‘local’ perspective have fundamentally challenged the universalist claims of biomedical diagnostic categories and psychiatric treatments. What seemingly emerges is a dichotomy between those who endorse more ‘universalist’ or ‘relativist’ approaches as an analytical lens to the challenges of the diverse healing strands within African contexts. In this article, we draw upon the resources of philosophy and existing empirical work to challenge the notion that constructive dialogue cannot be had between seemingly incommensurable healing practices in global mental health. First, we suggest the need for much-needed conceptual clarity to explore the hermeneutics of meaning, practice, and understanding, in order to forge constructive normative pathways of dialogue between seemingly incommensurable values and conceptual schemas around mental disorder and healing. Second, we contextualise the complex motives to emphasise difference amongst health practitioners within a competitive healing economy. Finally, we appeal to the notion of recovery as discovery as a fruitful conceptual framework which incorporates dialogue, comparative evaluation, and cross-cultural enrichment across divergent conceptualisations of mental health.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document