CHAPTER 4

THE POLITICS OF COUNSELING AND

PSYCHOTHERAPY: SOCIAL JUSTICE IN COUNSELING

                                         

The Education and Training of Mental Health Professionals

Most graduate programs continue to give inadequate treatment to the mental health issues of ethnic minorities.

Graduate programs often foster cultural encapsulation—substituting modal stereotypes for the real world, disregarding cultural variations in favor of universal truths, and using technique-oriented definitions of the counseling process.

The Education and Training of Mental Health Professionals

When one considers the criteria used by the mental health field to judge normality versus abnormality, ethnocentricity becomes glaring.

Statistics, standards of psychological health, and psychiatric diagnosis are all informed by White, middle-class values.

Curriculum and Training Deficiencies

Course offerings continue to lack a non-White perspective and to treat cultural issues as an adjunct or add-on.

A major criticism is that training programs are afraid for students to explore their personal biases.

Minorities and Pathology

The Genetically Deficient Model

The Culturally Deficient Model

The Culturally Diverse Model

Social Justice Counseling

Social justice counseling:• takes a social change perspective,• believes that inequities that arise within our society are due to monopoly of power, and • assumes that conflict is inevitable and not necessarily unhealthy.

Social Justice Counseling

Psychologists shouldactively work toward antiracism by spreading a curriculum of multiculturalism; and

embrace systems interventions and take on advocacy roles at the level of legislation and social policy.