A new framework in counseling psychology aims to fundamentally shift the field’s focus from individual pathology to the structural forces shaping mental distress. Published in The Counseling Psychologist, psychologist Melanie Wilcox and colleagues introduce a structural competency model that centers anti-Black racism and systemic oppression as primary determinants of mental health. Their approach challenges the limitations of multicultural competency frameworks and calls for a more politically engaged, justice-oriented psychology.
“Our perspective is simultaneously grounded in the deep-seated belief that change must occur at the structural level as well as the reality that most counseling psychologists will be working with individuals and providing individual-level interventions,” the authors write. “As such, our goal is to emphasize that our individual (downstream) work must be grounded in an upstream analysis and understanding while also describing how we can and should work upstream, too.”
This model reorients counseling psychology’s work in assessment, psychotherapy, vocational counseling, prevention, research, and education by shifting the focus from individual symptoms to the broader sociopolitical conditions that shape distress. The authors argue that psychology must move beyond merely recognizing cultural differences to actively dismantling the systems that produce mental suffering.
This work builds upon existing critiques of structural competency, such as those from a Mad Studies perspective, arguing that structural competency fails to question psychiatry’s power dynamics and the faulty concepts underlying medicalized understandings of madness.
You’ve landed on a MIA journalism article that is funded by MIA supporters. To read the full article, sign up as a MIA Supporter. All active donors get full access to all MIA content, and free passes to all Mad in America events.
Current MIA supporters can log in below.(If you can’t afford to support MIA in this way, email us at [email protected] and we will provide you with access to all donor-supported content.)
Donate
Current Supporters Log-In
You’ve landed on a MIA journalism article that is funded by MIA supporters. To read the full article, sign up as a MIA Supporter. All active donors get full access to all MIA content, and free passes to all Mad in America events.
Current MIA supporters can log in below.(If you can’t afford to support MIA in this way, email us at [email protected] and we will provide you with access to all donor-supported content.)
link
