Climate Aware Practice
I will be adding in material as I do a major research project on this during 2024.
Britt Wray on Decolonising Climate Therapy
Jennifer Mullan is a clinical psychologist who focuses on decolonizing therapy, which means using alternatives to the mainstream mental health model that can further emotional wellness on a larger collective scale for communities of colour. I wanted to know what she thought the climate-aware therapy field can do to make its services more accessible to the most vulnerable communities, so I gave her a call. Her own clinical practice is centred around the fact that the standard for therapy that’s widely in use today, which happens one-on-one and at high cost, was built from a colonial and individualistic individualistic biomedical perspective. “The mental health industrial complex, the way that it is set up, continues to serve the elite, or at least the middle-class white person,” she said.
Front-line communities may be better served in group therapy in community centres, or in one-on-one therapy at low cost. Honouring ancestors and spirit—as Mullan puts it, “We’re going to need to hang on to something outside ourselves,” whatever that may be—is a meaningful practice in various cultural contexts. Religion and spirituality may factor strongly into one’s world view and coping strategy—anchors that “mainstream” therapy isn’t always comfortable addressing. However, climate-conscious therapy is in a good position to dismantle the traditional clinical model—it’s already doing so in some ways—and to lead towards a more equitable, multi-dimensional approach to mental health. De-pathologizing eco-distress and treating it as a collective experience are major facets of this shift, alongside an interest in uplifting community support. The Climate Psychology Alliance, for instance, hosts Climate Cafés—human-centric, emotions-friendly group meetings where people can safely express what they’re sensing about what the climate crisis means, not in some far-out future way, but for their own lives and loved ones. They are relational and permission-giving spaces that help people work through their fears and frustrations together.
Wray, Britt. Generation Dread (pp. 116-117). Knopf Canada. Kindle Edition.
Jennifer Mullan is a clinical psychologist who focuses on decolonizing therapy, which means using alternatives to the mainstream mental health model that can further emotional wellness on a larger collective scale for communities of colour. I wanted to know what she thought the climate-aware therapy field can do to make its services more accessible to the most vulnerable communities, so I gave her a call. Her own clinical practice is centred around the fact that the standard for therapy that’s widely in use today, which happens one-on-one and at high cost, was built from a colonial and individualistic individualistic biomedical perspective. “The mental health industrial complex, the way that it is set up, continues to serve the elite, or at least the middle-class white person,” she said.
Front-line communities may be better served in group therapy in community centres, or in one-on-one therapy at low cost. Honouring ancestors and spirit—as Mullan puts it, “We’re going to need to hang on to something outside ourselves,” whatever that may be—is a meaningful practice in various cultural contexts. Religion and spirituality may factor strongly into one’s world view and coping strategy—anchors that “mainstream” therapy isn’t always comfortable addressing. However, climate-conscious therapy is in a good position to dismantle the traditional clinical model—it’s already doing so in some ways—and to lead towards a more equitable, multi-dimensional approach to mental health. De-pathologizing eco-distress and treating it as a collective experience are major facets of this shift, alongside an interest in uplifting community support. The Climate Psychology Alliance, for instance, hosts Climate Cafés—human-centric, emotions-friendly group meetings where people can safely express what they’re sensing about what the climate crisis means, not in some far-out future way, but for their own lives and loved ones. They are relational and permission-giving spaces that help people work through their fears and frustrations together.
Wray, Britt. Generation Dread (pp. 116-117). Knopf Canada. Kindle Edition.