A recent study in Psychology & Sexuality found that collective action may mitigate the adverse mental health effects of critical consciousness among LGBTQ+ young adults.
The research was led by Roberto L. Abreu at the University of Florida, along with colleagues Rodrigo Costa, Teresa Vazquez, and Aldo Barrita. The team surveyed 460 LGBTQ+ young adults in the United States to examine how critical consciousness, collective action, and mental health outcomes are connected across racial and gender identities.
“LGBTQ+ people with higher critical consciousness showed more depression symptoms and anxiety symptoms at low levels of private (but not overall nor public) LGBTQ+ collective action in the overall sample and in White people,” the authors write. “These findings suggest that LGBTQ+ individuals who engage in collective action within their interpersonal relationships are likely to believe that they are contributing to enacting social change, resulting in increased psychological well-being.”
While the findings suggest that private collective action can help buffer mental health risks for some groups, the same does not hold true for transgender and gender-diverse (TGD) individuals and LGBTQ+ people of color, highlighting the urgent need for mental health interventions specifically designed to address the compounded impacts of racism, transphobia, and systemic oppression.
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Okay framing THIS as “mental health” is just deeply insulting. I am one of these trans people with a lot of collective consciousness who is suffering horribly because I live in a world with no future hope for ANYTHING to EVER get better. And my fucking god, I am NOT the “unhealthy” one here.
How about we instead frame transphobia as a “mental illness” where people adhere to delusional beliefs seeing trans people everywhere and persecutory delusions about the trans people ruining everything.
Come on, MIA, this is just pathetic. Take the fucking “social justice” off your tagline, for real. What the hell is the point of all this about “power threat meaning framework” and “decolonization” and “recognizing structural oppression” when you’re still going to just go right back to this framing of every form of distress as “mental illness”?
This is literally just going back to calling trans people “mentally ill” because we’re suffering in a hostile world that wants to eradicate us and it’s fucking insulting and disgusting to see here.
Take the fucking “social justice” tag off, this website isn’t doing jack shit for social justice anymore.
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As one with both a trans and gay child, whom I love, I disagree. But I am also a Christian, who had to leave my too paternalist ex-religion … and other churches that disparaged the LGBQT community. However, I never did stop believing in God. And I do believe the Triune God loves all the souls on this planet today.
Will you please do me a small couple of favors, “Dead soul”? Who I hope and pray is not a dead soul. Please pray to awaken with the Holy Spirit one night. Then when ready, please pray to be moved by the Holy Spirit.
I do believe if you do, you wlll know God and the Holy Spirit love all the souls on this planet, including you. And, hopefully, we are in the healing phase from living in a Satanic controlled period on earth … or at least we’ll get there soon.
Oh, but I will add, please don’t neurotoxic poison the LGBQT community, psych professionals, who collectively used to claim being gay was a “mental illness.” I’ve warned my own children to stay away from the anticholinergic drugs (including the antidepressants and antipsychotics), and I do freely pass that recommendation on to the entirety of the LGBQT community.
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Why I think liberation psychotherapy makes such little sense as a concept. You don’t develop criticial conciousness in a consulting room and you don’t get involved in organizing for action in the consulting room…if anything the psychotherapy inhibits hits process.
Experience of well being is from actual engagement aligned with your values and being part of a community that has shared commitments and mutual respect. You can’t buy any of this in a relationship with a professional.
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I see these researchers as seriously confused.
Mental health is not the same as social well-being or freedom from suppression.
The suppressors, not the suppressed, are the ones in need of mental health interventions. Dialog with a suppressed person can help discover the source of the suppression. The only advice you can give to the suppressed person is to disconnect from that suppressive source.
Critical theory may identify the source of suppression with a group, like “whiteness” or “colonizers.” This is not at all helpful, as many of the suppressed people may themselves be white or be somehow related to people who at one time worked as colonizers.
Conflating mental health with social justice is getting us nowhere. Mental health problems (to the extent that they are even real) arise from deeply hidden past traumas. Social justice problems arise from people in positions of power acting crazy. If such people are psychopaths they won’t even admit that they are (or might be) doing anything wrong.
Although loosely related (as the suppressives have their own deeply hidden traumas), these are not the same problems, and handling suppression by “treating” the suppressed is an extremely advanced technique that most therapists know nothing about. Real social justice involves removing real suppressives from active involvement in society (as an ethics or legal action, not a treatment action) and protecting others from suppression.
Our legal and “mental health” systems are not even set up to do things properly. That’s why so many advocate just trashing them. Trashing those systems, though, won’t handle our problems with crime or with mental health. And there are plenty of people in those systems who would do the right thing if they knew what it was. So let’s figure out what it is.
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