A Multilevel Approach to Integrating Social Justice and Family Therapy

Abstract

Increasingly, therapists are called upon to deal with research and practice around social justice because of the pervasive nature of inequality and oppression. This article reports some of the major contributions of family therapy to social justice and how other helping fields, such as counseling psychology, community psychology, and education, are acting on their discussions of this issue. Results from our interviews of 18 Arab-American couples, are presented to illustrate the interweaving issues of social justice in clients' lives. Finally, based on our interviews, we adapt a multilevel model of intervention that has been developed in the field of community psychology and show how this model can be utilized in family therapy.