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.  Courses should include: (a) a consciousness-raising component, (b) an affective/experiential component, (c) a knowledge component, and (d) a skills component.

Minorities and Pathology The Genetically Deficient Model The Culturally Deficient Model The Culturally Diverse Model

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 should actively 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. Mental Health Implications The actual practice of therapy can result in cultural oppression. Social scientists must realize that the so-called pathological socioemotional characteristics of ethnic minorities can be directly attributed to unfair practices in society. We need to balance our study by also focusing on the positive characteristics of ethnic minorities. External circumstances like prejudice, discrimination can cause psychological disturbances. Cultural competence and multicultural counseling and therapy are about social justice. Social justice advocacy is quite different from the traditional clinical role in which students are trained.