President’s Message: Taking Up the Challenge

President’s Message: Taking Up the Challenge

By Anna Lau, PhD

Your SCCAP Board has continued to think about how we can position our Division to promote racial equity in children’s mental health through our mission of enhancing the science and practice of clinical child and adolescent psychology by supporting our membership and the field’s workforce. For example, we have approached this intentionally through our programming content at the upcoming APA convention, Translational Research to Address Determinants of Mental Health Disparities for Children of Color, and our inaugural Clinical Practice Institute showcasing Culturally-Responsive Evidence-Based Practices for Children and Families. These educational opportunities may support our members in learning about and incorporating culturally responsive and race-conscious approaches to intervention and assessment for diverse youth. But it is vital to take a step back from thinking about content and programming to reflect on how we can catalyze enduring structural change, which is much harder.

So many of us in our field are grappling with how to engage in collective action towards the goal of dismantling barriers to mental health equity. In his 2019 book, Ibram X. Kendi lays out, in accessible ways, How to Be An Antiracist. A key starting point in this journey is recognizing the definition of a racist as not just a person who hold racist ideas, but also as anyone “who is supporting a racist policy through their actions or inaction.” Accepting this definition means that we begin to reckon with our own agency and complicity within systems and structures that have caused and continue to perpetuate racial inequity. This can be uncomfortable and unsettling for those of us who identify with progressive causes and who have devoted our careers to serving diverse youth and families. Becoming anti-racist requires us to move beyond the impulse to say we are “not racist,” and instead ask ourselves to identify the ways we hold up systems of oppression.

“What an anti-racist does first and foremost is identify racial inequities.” Racism yields enduring and deep racial inequities in every sector, and children’s mental health is by no means an exception. As child clinical psychologists who identify as practitioners, educators, and researchers, we can use our disciplinary scientific and intervention training to identify and act on racial inequities in our local contexts. What data points can you examine to identify the impacts of racism in your organization? Adopting an equity mindset involves reframing observed racial disparities as a problem of organizational practice (not a problem of minoritized group deficits) and viewing their elimination as a shared responsibility[1]. This work can occur with multiple targets: (1) Diversity work- e.g., increasing the number of clinical child psychologists from historically excluded and underrepresented racial groups, (2) Inclusion work – e.g., transforming the culture and structure of our professional society so that historically excluded and underrepresented people feel a sense of belonging, and (3) Equity work – e.g., dismantling barriers that impede the hiring and promotion of faculty from historically excluded and underrepresented racial groups.

Change involves an iterative process of examining inequities, understanding root causes of inequities, designing actions to transform organizational practice and structures, and reflecting on their impact (SEA Change Institute). We are fortunate that our field is home to thought and action leaders who have identified some starting points for our local work in reducing inequities in: (1) the delivery and outcomes of children’s mental health care, and (2) the education and training of the next generation of clinical child psychologists. Disparities in clinical services are likely familiar to many of our members; a useful guide from the APA Working Group for Addressing Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Youth Mental Health offers starting points for how to reduce inequities in care access and engagement  We also have examples of road maps of anti-racist action to reduce racial inequities in the education and training of clinical scientists, including Galan and colleagues’ editorial in JCCAP accessible here.

The SCCAP Board is calling on our members to examine racial inequities in your local contexts, consider the guidance on starting points for action above, and propose action that we can support through our Child Mental Health in Action Funding Mechanisms. The 2023 Call highlights our priority on proposals that promote anti-racism efforts to achieve equity in mental health and developmental outcomes for children and adolescents in diverse communities, including efforts to promote diversity and inclusion in the discipline. We are here to support this collective journey in becoming anti-racist as a discipline.

In service,
Anna Lau

[1] McNair, Bensimon, & Malcom-Piqueux (2020). From equity talk to equity walk: Expanding practitioner knowledge for racial justice in higher education.