Beware of equating increased access to mental health services with health equity

As the coronavirus public health crisis continues affect countries around the world, it has become increasingly evident that the burdens that are imposed by the pandemic are not shared equally Those with fewer resources, immigrants, and members of marginalized and racialized groups are at a disproportionate risk of physical harm and emotional distress from coronavirus 2019 However, when responses discrimination, social disadvantage, and racism are captured as depression, this may result in overmedicalization and overtreatment Instead of focusing predominantly on increased access mental health services, humanistic psychology has long recognized the need address the structural and systemic obstacles that undermine well-being Indeed, responses wide-scale human suffering that focus exclusively on intraindividual interventions often keep the status quo intact and do not animate our political imagination If mental health issues are embedded in inequality, which is a social and structural category, not a psychological category, then it is ignorance producing suggest that one can solve mental health issues on an individual, psychological level Finally, an important lesson can be learned from humanistic psychology's emphasis on empathic dwelling when bearing witness human suffering Empathic dwelling is not a cognitive or intellectual exercise that simply facilitates mental health treatment Rather, it is a purposeful stance or comportment from which we try to feel one's way into the other's experience [ein-fu hlen] [what] Husserl described as 'trading places' It is only in and through this type of comport ment, this deeply felt attunement, that we will be able bring clinical and epistemic humility fruition (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)

Actuarial science · Cultural competence · Cultural humility · Economics · Equating · Humility · Mental health · Pedagogy · Political science · Psychotherapist · Applied Psychology · Law · Optimism, Hope, and Well-being · Psychology · Resilience and Mental Health · Social Psychology

• Short-Term Changes in Internalizing Symptoms and Help-Seeking Attitudes During the Coronavirus Pandemic

  P Priscilla Lui, Shefali Katedia et al.•Journal of Social and Clinical…•2021

  Add to list