Welcome to Therapy for Social Change!
This newsletter focuses on the ways violence that is created by systems—particularly patriarchy and white supremacy—impacts our mental health, and what we can do to combat, transform, and overcome its effects.
Despite the widespread and pervasive impact of systemic violence and oppression on individuals and communities, there is currently no diagnostic category that accounts for the impact of systemic racism or patriarchy on the mental health of people in the United States.
Instead, the mainstream field of mental health focuses almost solely on the individual. It is the individual’s mind, or brain, or feelings, or choices that are said to be the source of the problem. Paradoxically, it is this same “disordered” person who, with the help of a therapist or other kind of practitioner, is responsible for figuring out how to get better.
This focus on the individual extends to the concept of violence itself: the treatments and research that focus on healing from violence largely assume that the source of violence is interpersonal, rather than structural.
Despite the widespread and pervasive impact of systemic violence and oppression on individuals and communities, there is currently no diagnostic category that accounts for the impact of systemic racism or patriarchy on the mental health of people in the United States.
I’m starting this newsletter because before I was a therapist, I was a professor who taught people to understand critical theory, and to use its concepts and practices to fight for social change. It is not an overstatement for me to say that critical theory saved my life. If I hadn’t understood the ways structures work, and the ways violence and oppression create despair, depression, anxiety, and hopelessness, I would have blamed myself for my feelings of powerlessness, and my terror of taking up literal and political space in the world.
There’s a lot of talk about the field of mental health being ready for “disruption”—tech companies are creating apps; people are more ready to talk about their emotions and difficulties; there’s lots of articles about the lack of care and the oceans of need.
But there’s not a lot of talk about how the practice of mainstream mental health still takes place in rooms that are statistically likely to be full of White people, receiving treatments based on research on White research subjects, and helped by practitioners who were taught in universities by White professors.
The field isn’t calling for an analysis of how culture-wide violence—against Black and brown people; Asian-identified folks; against the disabled; against women and gender and sexually non-conforming people; the incarcerated and disenfranchised; violence against the earth, the water, the air—is linked to the widespread distress that is being expressed, individual by individual, in room after room.
The field needs to change. And despite the institutional unwillingness to change the frame, there are thousands of practitioners, researchers, healers, and activists, all making contributions to this change. There are people and communities who have been working this way for generations. There are people who want this change, but aren’t sure what to do next. This newsletter, and the community it creates, is here to help that change take effect, and support those who are already doing the work.
I hope you’ll join in. I hope you’ll share this About page with people you know, to start building community.
I hope you’ll write back to the posts, to tell me what you want to know more about, or share resources and ideas that are important to you.
All my best,
Rebecca
