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Fuck it. Let’s talk about how we need to recontextualize the systems of mental healthcare and social work to truly address how inequality harms individuals while we’re at it.
Covering complex trauma, to collective suffering, to mindfulness. A thread: https://twitter.com/morganmpage/status/1268851045977010177
Covering complex trauma, to collective suffering, to mindfulness. A thread: https://twitter.com/morganmpage/status/1268851045977010177
Most who work in Psych/Social Work fields are relatively well off white women. Programs are long and expensive, grad school programs are competitive, you need to supervised clinical/field hours, and the initial pay is terrible. These are racial and class gateways.
For a black person having a Black therapist or social worker is going to lead to a better outcome of said services; full stop. It is well documented that clinicians from the same communities and backgrounds as those they’re serving understand and serve them better.
The correlation between practitioners + clients/patients coming from the same background and better (less fatal) outcomes is well documented in mental and physical healthcare. Therefore, shouldn’t these systems be heavily focused on getting poor and black people to work for them?
It looks like “inclusion” initiatives in psych, social work and healthcare often state that these institutions are devoted to representation that’s reflective of those they serve.
This is PR and is sadly cosmetic. Substantial representation would require a fundamental change.
This is PR and is sadly cosmetic. Substantial representation would require a fundamental change.
No intergenerational wealth to fund schooling, lack of social access to job opportunities, established professionals in the field insisting that prospective black workers lack the “soft skills” (talking like a polite white woman) the work requires... this all compounds on itself
Even IF/when Black folks become therapists & social workers, the representation isn’t enough. Both systems need to be fundamentally contested and rebuilt to give mental/community healthcare workers the tools necessary to address the traumas of American Blackness and poverty.
Psych is a field that personally pathologizes racial trauma & poverty (we’ll get back to that shortly). Social Work is a field birthed from wealthy white women finding it quaint to ogle the poor in the name of charity, while only materially addressing enough to feel good about it
Are social work/psych ultimately positive forces in the world? Yes. They both address a very real need. But having them be manned by for-profit healthcare systems and the nonprofits industrial complex (don’t get me started) in America means their motives aren’t trustworthy.
Let’s get back to complex trauma and pathologizing Blackness/poverty: The field of American Psychology is organized around the idea that it’s up to the personal efforts & treatment of a single individual to undo harm. Often the person who seeks treatment and is insured.
This cultural moment of the BLM/George Floyd protests is calling A LOT into question in terms of what’s possible. How can we imagine dismantling institutions organized around power/money without imaging how to build systems organized around community/accountability?
Our mental, social & physical healthcare systems NEED to be able to fundamentally acknowledge and then address how centuries of systemic inequality causes personal suffering. As it stands, most psychologists (particularly Mindfullness ones) leave this out of the picture.
Wouldn’t psychologists, social workers, and healthcare practitioners from a particular community, working within a system designed by and for that community, be best equipped to serve it?
We all know that every system in this country needs reimagined to serve people; not the other way around. Do I know how to peacefully hand the reigns of psych/social work systems over to Black communities? Nope. But I know that these systems are incapable of reforming themselves.
I’m not going to pretend I know the needs of Black communities or understand their suffering. Hell, I cant even work in said fields bc my white ass can’t afford the necessary schooling.
Point is that whitos in Psych and SW shouldn’t delude ourselves into thinking we can understand, let alone address, Black suffering.
Educate ourselves, hold one another accountable, and do the work? Yes.
But these systems, or what we replace them with, need to be Black lead.
Educate ourselves, hold one another accountable, and do the work? Yes.
But these systems, or what we replace them with, need to be Black lead.
If you’ve got questions on this or want to start elaborating on this, please please feel free. This is a conversation we need to start having and I’m sure there’s a hell of a lot of people out there who have smarter shit to say about it than I do.
