Beyond awareness of ‘difference’ and towards social action: ‘Solidarity practice’ alongside young people

Abstract

Who I am as a working-class black African woman cannot be disconnected from how I work. It shapes my lens with regard to power, difference and liberation. It is not surprising that I have been drawn to social justice approaches to psychological intervention, such as Narrative Therapy, Coordinated Management of Meaning (CMM), social constructionist systemic therapy and liberation psychology. These practices involve taking up the cause of the oppressed in ways that respect them as agents of their own liberation. In this article, I describe what I term 'solidarity practice' with young people and their families as a counter force resisting the increasingly blaming and individualising discourse of mainstream psychology, psychiatry and social policy.

Therapists’ experience of the lifeline in narrative exposure therapy

“…An awareness of this lens is especially pertinent at a time during which diversifying therapy professions and ensuring cultural competence and antiracist practice should be at the center of all aspects of clinical and research work (Schnyder et al, 2016). Further research should investigate how individuals from non-White backgrounds experience NET, particularly how it fits with cultural values such as collectivism, and with a preference for creative and community-oriented posttrauma interventions (Afuape, 2016(Afuape, , 2020. Furthermore, the therapists interviewed had used the lifeline exclusively in NHS or charity settings in the United Kingdom.…”

‘Rarely discussed but always present’: Exploring therapists’ accounts of the relationship between social class, mental health and therapy

“…The focus on clients' intra-psychic processes, as distinct from their socio-political context, is critiqued for minimising the importance of the widely acknowledged (e.g. Adler, 2007;Liu et al, 2004;Smith, 2005) relationship between clients' socio-political context and their mental health (Sinclair, 2007). Within this subtheme, the influence of class on mental health was dismissed through the construction of it being an out-dated (and therefore irrelevant) concept, and through the formulation of the client's distress as something appropriate for psychological therapy.…”

Beyond ‘solidarity’ with Black Lives Matter: Drawing on liberation psychology and transformative justice to address institutional and community violence in young Black lives

“…Creativity is what we do with our lives in the face of what life does to us; therefore, creativity can be a form of resistance, 13 resistance can be a way of living creatively within the constraints of our lives (Afuape, 2011) and solidarity can be a generative form of collective resistance. 14 In our therapeutic work, we can connect to people's creativity (Afuape, 2016) and ask questions like:…”