“Mental Health” Power and Its Effects: A Commentary on Battling Against Inter‐Faith Relations in Israel

Abstract

Hakak (2016) provides an opportunity to examine how mental health and therapy systems in the United States operate to maintain current social and political structures. This commentary suggests that practitioners, including family therapists, participate in and support practices that do not serve the interests of marginalized social groups, despite our best intentions. Discourse theory offers a lens through which such practices become visible and thus open to revision.

A Time to Reflect on JMFT

“…Also in my 2012 editorial, I mentioned the trend of participatory approaches to family therapy and research, and implicitly, my commitment to this trend. While participatory‐related approaches to intervention have been published in the pages of JMFT (Sparks, ), this is an area I would like to see increase in the future. As clients participate in shaping the treatment they receive, the more traditional hierarchies flatten and the more clients become partners in the change process.…”

“…Similarly, I want to make room in JMFT for what some may consider against‐the‐grain articles that raise larger issues. Hakak (), with a commentary by Sparks () have done this regarding current practices and potential abuses of the mental health system that family therapists may inadvertently collude in.…”