Special Issue: Community, Psychology and Family Therapy

As co-editors of this special issue of ANZJFT we are writing in our own academic context of clinical psychology. Clinical psychology has a long history of focusing on the individual which positions pathology intrapsychically through diagnosis and formulation, rather than socioculturally. Clinical psychology is also averse to the politicisation of therapy, having a long way to go in terms of responding to the marginalisation of groups, such as Indigenous Australians, those with diverse gender identities and sexualities, refugees, and others. Family therapy has a long history of resisting individualism and focusing instead on relational and social processes, with notable examples being Multi-Systemic Family Therapy, Just Therapy, and Open Dialogue. Our aim in this special issue is to provide a platform to further amplify forms of therapy based on social activism and wider ecological approaches to the conceptualisation of distress, forms of therapy that both recognise and extend upon our relational metaphor in therapy. This special issue is divided into three streams, each representing a different tradition of responding to community needs therapeutically. The first section, Community-based Family Therapy, brings together three papers which explore the ways in which familiar systemic practices can be extended to address or mobilise community-level processes. The second section, Global Politics, Social Justice & Local Action, provides two examples of ways in which political issues and human rights can be incorporated into collaborative practice with people who have been affected by political violence and human rights violations. The third section, Community Psychology: North America and Beyond, draws on the tradition of North American community psychology, in particular Rappaport and Bronfenbrenner, to mobilise community resources to support parent–child relationships within marginalised communities. The first paper in Section 1, Creating Community: The Introduction of Multi-Family Therapy for Eating Disorders in Australia, by Lisa Dawson and colleagues, describes an innovative adaptation of multiple family therapy for young people with anorexia nervosa. This approach does not so much work directly with established networks for therapeutic purposes, but rather creates a community of families to develop solidarity and a hot-house effect, allowing for powerful forces to be mobilised as news of difference when tackling anorexia nervosa. The next paper, Moving Toward an Evidence-based Family and Community-based Approach to Improve the Lives of Children and Young People Who Have Experienced Abuse and Neglect by Sandra Heriot and colleagues, describes a NSW government initiative to apply both multisystemic therapy for child abuse and neglect and functional family therapy to the needs of Aboriginal families in community settings. The aim is to respond to Australia's history of systematically removing Indigenous children from their families during the Stolen Generation, and the ongoing disproportionate removal of Indigenous children today. The program mobilises community to keep families together when they come into contact with child protection services. The last paper, by Aspasia Karageorge and colleagues, Relationship and Family Therapy for Newly Resettled Refugees: An Interpretive Description of Staff Experiences, examines the perspectives of family therapists as they work with newly arrived refugee families. Therapists explain how their practice enabled them to see the culturally bound nature of post-Milan systemic therapy and seek new ways to adapt this model to the expectations and explanatory models of these families. Section 2 brings the current global political crisis into the therapy room. In this current context of massive forced migration, these authors seek ways to acknowledge and address human rights violations within the context of therapy. The paper by Diab and colleagues, Community Work in the Ongoing Crisis Context of Gaza: Integrating a Public Health and Human Rights Approach, describes a comprehensive community-embedded psychosocial service to address the needs of families impacted by the Israeli wars on Gaza. While individual and family therapy approaches are applied where necessary, a human rights lens promotes social inclusion by positioning recovery and reintegration following conflict as acts of resistance. In Asylum Seekers and Refugees: An Ethno-Clinical Approach, Barbetta and colleagues are responding to the political crisis in Europe due to mass migration of asylum seekers into Italy. They ask us to consider how polyphony and the multiple linguistic frames of displaced people may be employed to counter the totalising force of Europe's current swing to the right. Many of the considerations regarding the humanitarian arrival by boat will be familiar to Australians. Community psychology in Australia is dwarfed by clinical psychology and is at risk of becoming extinguished, apart from a strong foothold in Victoria. In the United States and Canada, however, it remains a powerful alternative. The first paper in our final stream is Advancing Early Childhood Development and Prevention Programs: A Pan-Canadian Knowledge Transfer Initiative for Better Beginnings, Better Futures by the prominent community psychologist Geoff Nelson and colleagues. It describes the Better Beginnings, Better Futures program, an early childhood initiative in economically disadvantaged communities. The focus is on the application of Bronfenbrenner's ecological model, drawing family, school, and community resources to support child and family development. The next paper by Tsarenko and colleagues, Reconnecting Fathers with Their Children: The Need to Directly Confront the Political and Structural Barriers for Successful Re-integration, explores the use of community psychology to respond to the effect of the opioid crisis on parenting by men post-incarceration. In particular, the program responds to the disproportionate incarceration of men of colour and promotes the reconnection of family bonds to support societal re-integration and family healing. The last paper is Empowerment and Accountability and Multi-layered Contexts of Influences: Parenting and the Avoidance of Harm in Harare, Zimbabwe by Dari and colleagues. It describes a Zimbabwean community-based parenting program aimed at promoting the social and emotional development of children who have experienced psychological harm. They describe how their program has been influenced by the principles of Rappaport, one of the originators of community psychology, including those of paradox, empowerment, second-order change, and narrative. We hope that you enjoy this special issue of ANZJFT and that it inspires you to consider community-based approaches in your work.

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