Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Aligning With Adolescents: A Literature Review Of Art Therapy In Residential Treatment Programs, Olivia Moore

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

Adolescents in residential treatment programs throughout the United States are a specialized population that demonstrate resiliency and hope every day. Many adolescents in these programs have experienced prominent levels of trauma that impact their ability to function in lower-level programs, foster homes, and in their communities. Residential treatment approaches may look like locked facilities with trauma-informed staff who provide programming options, mental health care, and safe living conditions for adolescents. Without strength-based approaches to treatment, this population may struggle to overcome their trauma, mental health challenges, and developmental needs. In this literature review, art therapy was offered to provide developmentally …

The Professional Roles And Functions Of School Psychologists In Alternative Vs Traditional Education, Staci C. Ballard

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

Alternative Education Settings (AES) are unique environments that serve students whose educational and/or social-emotional needs are not being met in traditional schools. Students frequently enter AES with a range of mental health diagnoses, previous traumas, and behavioral/academic challenges. AES also serve many students from systemically marginalized and oppressed backgrounds, who are placed in these settings at higher rates than privileged peers. Considering these patterns, it becomes critical that AES provide effective student support, rather than serve simply to contain students based on disciplinary factors and convenience.

School psychologists, with training in mental health and education, are well-positioned to provide these …

Harm Reduction In Psychotherapy, Jillian Cramer

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

With approximately 22 people dying due to opiate-related harms everyday in Canada (Government of Canada, 2023), there is a great need to offer low-barrier, evidence-based services for people who use substances across various disciplines, including healthcare, social services, and psychotherapy. This qualitative study examined the experiences of Canadian social justice-informed counsellors who work with clients who use substances from harm reduction frameworks of care. Seven counsellors were interviewed on their personal experiences implementing harm reduction in psychotherapy. Through a reflexive thematic analysis, five themes surfaced: axiology of harm reduction work, development of therapist surrounding harm reduction, main focuses of harm …

(Re)Constructing Race: How Essentialist Beliefs Shape Social Justice Support, Abbey Alvarado

Honors Theses

The political climate and social discourse around social justice has grown increasingly tense and hostile in recent years. The current study investigated potential predictors of the opposition to support for racial equity and social justice reforms. Research illustrates that a biological conceptualization of race (“essentialism”) has powerful implications on information processing and social-psychological outcomes regarding issues of race and racism. In the current study, we conducted a survey of 164 University of Richmond undergraduate students. The survey examined the interplay of essentialism and beliefs about systemic racism and white privilege on social justice support. The results showed that essentialist beliefs …

Examining The Motives Behind Performative Allyship, Salena Keys-Kukoricza

University Honors Theses

In this literature review, the author investigated the potential motivations and consequences of performative allyship. Performative Allyship can be characterized as a social status in which one exhibits a feigned display of support for known causes and social movements. The main issue surrounding performative allyship is the possible negative impact that it has on disadvantaged group members. Furthermore, researchers have encountered challenges in rendering the motivation behind allyship behaviors, with the current landscape and social environment. With the rise in cancel culture, fear of seeming prejudiced in a social circumstance may be attributed to individuals acting in allyship behaviors. Cancel …

My Path To Advanced Practice, Hannah Oiselle Knisley

Graduate Student Portfolios, Professional Papers, and Capstone Projects

No abstract provided.

Full Issue

SENG Journal: Exploring the Psychology of Giftedness

No abstract provided.

“Is That My Agenda Or Is That Serving The Client?”: Perspectives Of Social Justice-Oriented Counsellors On Working With Clients Who Express Oppressive Views, Lily G. Mackenzie

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Current North American public discourse is strongly influenced by widespread sociopolitical divide. Given that sociopolitical events seem to permeate conversations in the therapy room (Farber, 2018; MacLeod, 2013), it is essential that therapists are prepared to navigate conversations with clients who have beliefs different from their own. This qualitative study explored the experiences of Canadian social justice-oriented counsellors who have worked with clients with oppressive views. Seven counsellors were interviewed about their experiences of working with oppression in the therapy room. Through qualitative content analysis, informed by a phenomenological approach, five core themes emerged: effect of personal identities, determination of …

Sticky Situations: Understanding The Law And Life, Krystal Banks

National Youth Advocacy and Resilience Conference

Law and life go hand in hand. Understanding the law and how it connects to life can be an effective tool in teaching youth and adults the value of making good decisions when it comes to life and the law. Sticky Situations places real-world situations in the context of learning how to apply the law and effectively respond to life's sticky situations.

Counsellors' Beliefs On Social Justice And The Medicalization Of Counselling, Christopher Mullin

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Counselling is becoming more standardized under a medicalized discourse of diagnosis and manualized treatment partly due to changing standards and administrative needs (Strong, 2017). Through semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis, this study explored how social justice-oriented counsellors are impacted by the medicalization of counselling. Counsellors stated medicalization was pathologizing individuals, marginalizing groups, and homogenizing therapeutic work. Driven by systems and industries gatekeeping resources, maintaining the social status quo, and the profession’s pursuit of prestige and profit through the medical model, the medicalization of counselling has been steadily growing. Counsellors centered the profession’s emerging identity as primarily relational in the nature …

Perceived Discrimination Enhances The Association Between Distress And Impact Related To The Murder Of George Floyd And Unhealthy Alcohol Use In A Survey Sample Of U.S. Veterans Who Report Drinking, Monique T. Cano, Jill V. Reavis, David L. Pennington

Psychological Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Introduction

On May 25, 2020, George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer leading to increased social justice and antiracism movements (SJARM) across the United States. Vicarious exposure to racism and perceived discrimination are salient sources of distress which may lead to increased alcohol use as means of coping. The primary aim of the current study was to examine how perceived discrimination and the subjective impact and personal distress related to the SJARM following the George Floyd murder interact and relate to unhealthy alcohol use among U.S. Veterans.

Methods

286 Veterans were assessed for unhealthy alcohol use (AUDIT-10), perceived …

Book Review: Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together In The Cafeteria? And Other Conversations About Race, Laura M. Stanton, Leo M. Taylor, Jenny M. Lobb, Pat Holmes, Steve Brady, Imani Scruggs

Journal of Youth Development

Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? and Other Conversations About Race is a 2017 revised and updated edition to Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum’s original book written in 1997. The book explores decades of research on the psychology of racism, with an emphasis on the psychology of racial identity in Black, White, and other ethnic and cultural identities. The author helps readers gain a better understanding of historic and modern racism and the implications it has on individuals today. The book also contains important messages for people who work with diverse groups of adults and particularly …

Social Justice And Its Implications For Human Development In Jordan, Majd Akram Nasser Al-Zoubi

Journal of the Association of Arab Universities for Research in Higher Education (مجلة اتحاد الجامعات العربية (للبحوث في التعليم العالي

The study aimed at defining social justice and human development, clarifying indicators of social justice in Jordan, clarifying the nature of the problematic of social justice in Jordan, the reality of human development in Jordan, and analyzing the nature of the problematic relationship between social justice and the level of human development in Jordan. The study adopted the descriptive analytical approach by identifying the observed elements of the studied phenomenon and performs the function of revealing the studied reality, and the study concluded that there is a negative impact of the problem of social justice in Jordan on impeding the …

Radically Reframing Studies On Neurobiology And Socioeconomic Circumstances: A Call For Social Justice-Oriented Neuroscience, Elisabeth Kathleen Webb, Carlos Cardenas-Iniguez, Robyn Douglas

Psychology Faculty Articles

Socioeconomic circumstances are associated with symptoms and diagnostic status of nearly all mental health conditions. Given these robust relationships, neuroscientists have attempted to elucidate how socioeconomic-based adversity “gets under the skin.” Historically, this work emphasized individual proxies of socioeconomic position (e.g., income, education), ignoring the effects of broader socioeconomic contexts (e.g., neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage) which may uniquely contribute to chronic stress. This omission represented a disconnect between neuroscience and other allied fields that have recognized health is undeniably linked to interactions between systems of power and individual characteristics. More recently, neuroscience work has considered how sociopolitical context affects brain structure …

Teaching Multicultural Psychology As A Cultural Competence Intervention: An Empirical Evaluation Of Course Components, Elizabeth Tish Hicks

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Previous research has shown that a semester-long multicultural psychology course can effectively increase students’ cultural competence-related attitudes when students complete the class in-person and online. Cultural competence refers to the knowledge, awareness, and skills required to appreciate, recognize, and effectively work with members of other cultural groups. This dissertation examined several components of a multicultural psychology course: ethical grading, skill development, and intergroup contact. The first paper discussed techniques used to minimize grading bias and examined whether cultural competence shifts impacted grading. Students’ cultural competence scores did not relate to or predict their grades in the course, which supported the …

Multicultural And Social Justice Training In Doctoral Counseling Programs: A Phenomenological Study, Alexander Hilert, Natoya Haskins, Shuhui Fan, Charles Smith, Leila Warraich, David Gosling

Journal of Counselor Preparation and Supervision

Multicultural and social justice are central values of the counseling profession. However, it is unclear how doctoral training advances counselor education students' multicultural and social justice competence and what deficits might exist. The researchers addressed this gap by conducting a phenomenological study of multicultural and social justice training experiences with ten doctoral counselor education students. The researchers identified three themes: limited multicultural integration, methods of compensation, and experiencing growth. The researchers also identified subthemes that explained how doctoral students prepared themselves to be multicultural and social justice competent through self-study, collaborative learning, and role-taking experiences despite often perceiving gaps in …

Impact Of Difficult Dialogues On Social Justice Attitudes During A Multicultural Psychology Course, Elizabeth Tish Hicks, María De La Caridad Alvarez, Melanie M. Domenech Rodríguez

Psychology Faculty Publications

Background Previous research shows that Multicultural Psychology courses can produce significant improvements in students’ cultural competence-related atttitudes in in-person and online courses. Objective We evaluated the impact of adding a skills-focused group assignment (i.e., Difficult Dialogues) to an online asynchronous Multicultural Psychology course. Method Undergraduate students filled out a battery of self-report measures at the beginning and end of the course. Of the 192 total students, 107 were in course sections which completed a Difficult Dialogue (DD) group project, and 85 were in the teaching as usual (TAU) section. Results Students in DD groups had significantly greater pre-to post-increases on …

Intergroup Dialogue: Affecting Real Change, Lauryn Hulett

Honors Projects

Intergroup Dialogue (IGD) is a course adapted from The University of Michigan. In this Honors Project, a systematic literature review is done from eleven sources in hopes to theorize best practices and areas of improvement amongst applications of Intergroup Dialogue.

How Do Arts Programs Facilitate Emotion Regulation In The Prison Setting?, Dana Parker

Senior Theses and Projects

Reentry and prison arts programs provide an opportunity for rehabilitation that facilitates healthier emotion regulation (ER), relationship building, and self-esteem. To measure the effects of arts-based interventions on ER, formerly incarcerated people completed a questionnaire that included three different measures: the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire Short-Form (CERQ-Short), the Emotion Regulation Strategies for Artistic Creative Activities (ERS-ACA), and the Self-expression and Emotion Regulation in Art Therapy Scale (SERATS). Results showed that there were significant differences between males and females on their scores on ER subscales, where women more often than men employed positive ER strategies. In support of my hypotheses, higher …

Does Emotion Training Reduce Implicit Racial Bias?, Marisa Davis, Emma Greenwood

Research on Capitol Hill

USU junior Marisa and senior Emma are Utah natives studying psychology. Both are Honors students and the team is leading this project through a student grant they received. Some people mistakenly perceive Black people as being angry when they are actually showing neutral or fearful expressions, which puts Black individuals at higher risk in police interactions. Marisa and Emma have been developing and testing trainings on emotion recognition to challenge this implicit bias, which they hope will be implemented in police forces in the future. The two see undergraduate research as a way to help other people. While they agree …

Learning From The Standpoints Of Minoritized Students: An Exploration Of Multicultural And Social Justice Counseling Training, Julie A. Cohen, Anusha Kassan, Kaori Wada

The Qualitative Report

The results of a feminist research endeavour that explored multicultural (MC) counselling and social justice (SJ) training experiences from the standpoint of eight culturally non-dominant doctoral students are presented. Participants represented students within the five counselling psychology programs accredited by the Canadian Psychological Association. Specifically, the research aimed to address the following research question: How do counselling psychology doctoral students who self-identify with non-dominant cultural identities perceive their experiences of MC and SJ training? This research adopted a feminist standpoint theory epistemology to guide an interpretative phenomenological analysis to reflect the culturally rich, complex, and situated experiences of participants, while …

Exploring Opportunities For Supporting Juvenile Justice-Involved Youth: A Path Forward Through Expanding Graduate Training In School Psychology, Erica L. Gleason

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

School psychologists are equipped with a dynamic skill set and an ethical and moral responsibility to support the diverse needs of all youth. While juvenile justice-involved youth may not be a primary subpopulation served by all school psychologists, they are a high-needs group that requires special consideration and attention. As a professional entity, school psychologists’ knowledge and expertise are not optimally applied to serving these youth. Consequently, school psychologists may be forgoing an opportunity to improve rates of successful school and community reintegration and overall positive life outcomes for justice-involved youth. The first manuscript of this dissertation presents precipitating and …

Experiences Of Queer Women And Nonbinary Individuals With Mental Health Care Services During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Elizabeth Claire Simpson

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has had a negative effect on mental health. Queer women and nonbinary individuals disproportionately experience mental health issues when compared to heterosexuals, often facing challenges in receiving care from providers who are sensitive to their concerns and competent in their care. Objective: To report experience of queer women and nonbinary individuals in the United States with mental health care services before and during the pandemic. Methods: Data were gathered via a 43-item survey about experiences with mental health care services before and during the pandemic that was posted on four social media sites, and flyers hung …

Social Justice Conversations: Using Critical Dialogue To Unpack Oppression, Annemarie Gockel, Peggy O'Neill, Nnamdi Pole

Psychology: Faculty Publications

Dialogues can bring people together across social divides to develop mutual understanding, generate empathy, and challenge oppression. Yet, all too often, these conversations derail and merely reinforce rather than challenge the social divides they are designed to bridge. We piloted a brief small group program aimed at fostering dialogue about racism and other forms of oppression with 100 undergraduates. A thematic analysis of the resulting 37 group transcripts found that the critical dialogue process helped participants unpack the nature and complexity of oppression, deepen their understanding of privilege, and begin to share and challenge the experience of oppression itself. Sharing …

Guest Editorial: Mass Atrocity And Collective Healing: New Possibilities For Regenerating Communities, Scherto R. Gill

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This Special Issue brings together five articles from different disciplines. It aims to contribute to the emergent critical voices in research about collective trauma and collective healing by introducing novel perspectives and inviting further debates on the relevant issues evoked. For this reason, the Special Issue focuses on collective healing through a number of prisms. First, it delves into the notions of wounding and trauma, with a view to advance a well-argued theoretical framework for understanding collective healing. Second, it identifies underlying ethical pillars for collective healing, especially the principles of equality and well-being that affirm human dignity founded on …

“I Am More Than My Country Of Origin”: An Arts-Based Engagement Ethnography With Racialized Newcomer Women In Canada, Danielle J. Smith, Amy Green, Sarah Nutter, Anusha Kassan, Monica Sesma-Vazquez, Nancy Arthur Prof, Shelly Russell-Mayhew

The Qualitative Report

Many women immigrate with the hope that they will gain new opportunities for themselves and their families, however, they often face significant challenges due to the intersectional stigmas related to their gender, immigration status, and other aspects of their social location. In this study, we sought to understand the holistic experience of racialized newcomer women to better support their integration process. Using Arts-Based Engagement Ethnography (ABEE), we employed the use of cultural probes and qualitative interviews to gain an in-depth understanding of the experience of ten newcomer women. An ethnographic analysis of this data yielded four overarching structures which include …

Beyond ‘Help-Seeking,’ Toward ‘Engagement’: Understanding Barriers To Mental Health Equity Among Sexual Minority Individuals, Elliot Spengler

Doctoral Dissertations

The finding that 57.4% of adults living in the United States with a diagnosable mental health disorder do not receive mental health care (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 2018) opens important questions as to what structural and individual factors contribute to this “treatment gap” and individuals’ willingness and/or ability to seek out traditional mental health care. Sexual minority (SM) individuals experience inequitable mental health outcomes and report more unmet mental health needs and more barriers to health care than heterosexual individuals. Thus, there is a need to understand the process of mental health care engagement (MHCE) for SM …

Factors Contributing To Activism Among Advantaged-Group And Disadvantaged-Group Undergraduate Students, Anne Guzman

Psychology ETDs

Identifying factors that contribute to activism may be helpful in increasing activism. This study investigated how experiences, personality characteristics, beliefs, attitudes, group membership (i.e., POC, women, LGBTQ, and disabled individuals), and intersectional group membership defined by social location related to reported engagement in racial justice activism. A sample of 155 undergraduate students completed measures of empathy, openness to diversity, authoritarianism, multicultural experiences, level of prejudice, motivation to respond without prejudice, allophilia, understanding of privilege, racial/ethnic identity, and social support. Results supported that engagement in activism differed based on group membership for gender, LGBTQ+, and primary race and based on social …

Perceived Barriers To Black And Asian Solidarity: A Pilot Study Of Internalized Racial Oppression And Perspective-Taking, Josephine Wu

McNair Scholars Program

Cross-racial solidarity between Asian and Black communities in the U.S. needs increased mutual understanding. Research has limited knowledge of intergroup relations and how these groups perceive each other. Research suggests that one barrier is internalized racial oppression (IRO), but doesn’t consider IRO in intergroup contexts. This qualitative pilot study uses semi-structured interviews to identify patterns of themes related to intergroup IRO perspective-taking and perceived barriers to Black-Asian solidarity.

The Violence Of Postmodern “Gender Identity” Medicine, Heather Brunskell-Evans

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

The medical “transition” of children with “gender dysphoria” is increasingly normalized in North America, Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Although each country has specific national gender identity development services, the rationale for prescribing hormone treatment is broadly similar. A minority rights paradigm underpinned by postmodern theory has gained traction in the past 10 years and has been successful in influencing public policy, the education of pediatricians, endocrinologists, and mental health professionals. In this view, any response other than an affirmation of the child’s claim to be the opposite sex or “born in the wrong body” is …