|
|
Article: Reaching out: mental health delivery outside the box.(SPECIAL SECTION: COUNSELING OUTSIDE OF THE UNITED STATES: LOOKING IN AND REACHING OUT)
- Article from:
- Journal of Mental Health Counseling
- Article date:
- July 1, 2005
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2005 American Mental Health Counselors Association. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
Mental health does not exist in a vacuum. Indeed, a person's mental health can be influenced by sociocultural, political, and economic forces (Blustein, McWhirter, & Perry, 2005). For this reason, scholars in the mental health field have been increasingly calling for more systematic social justice work and for mental health professionals to identify and operate as social change agents (e.g., Blustein, Elman, & Gerstein, 2002; Fouad et al., 2004; Herr & Niles, 1998; Ivey & Collins, 2003; Kiselica & Robinson, 2001; Speight & Vera, 2004; Toporek, Gerstein, Fouad, Roysircar-Sodowsky, & Israel, in press; Vera & Speight, 2004).
When discussing such social change ...