Diversity conscious therapy

Diversity conscious therapy recognizes that oppression-induced stress results from persistent political strife in the context of intergenerational traumas. These social traumas include the psychological impact of slavery, Jim Crow laws, institutionalized racism, menacing policies toward immigrants, denial of indigenous American rights and history, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, LGBTQ community targeting, ceaseless violence against women, epidemic homelessness, and the threat of our shared imperiled eco-system. All of this point to a collective life out of balance that may touch each of us in different ways.

Some may cope by feeling helpless, checking out, going numb, overeating, leaning into addiction, feeling depressed, or being on edge. Social distress often defines the backdrop against which psychological symptoms develop. Systemic forms of oppression, such as racism are often minimized, or worse, through blaming the victim strategies.

However, the mental health field is rapidly changing. For example, look to the revolutionary work of groundbreaking psychologists, Dr. Joy DeGruy and Resmaa Menakem who describe a post-traumatic slave syndrome and its ongoing soul wounds. These views do bring refreshing awareness to the psychological hardship experienced by many African Americans as well as European Americans bearing this unhealed intergenerational legacy. We also find an effective therapeutic road map for recovery and resilience.

Also Dr. Samuel Kimbles has identified the helpful concept of a cultural complex and Dr. Fanny Brewster further defines a racial complex, a set of cultural beliefs about race often rooted in traumatic cultural history, that underlies social problems like racism and targeting of African Americans, indigenous, and immigrant populations. Significantly, this brings the focus on symptoms rooted in culturally-based stress on cultural conditions, where it belongs, rather than on perceived individual shortcomings.