Designed by the American Psychological Association as a way for the community to gather and learn directly from professional and expert voices, The 2023 Healing Is Here Summit did some very important work; bringing the vast world of academic concepts relating to the trauma, grief and oppression experienced by minoritized individuals in this country. Sometimes it can feel like these concepts are somewhat limited to the world of academia; so for me personally it was powerful to see concepts like oppression, internalized racism and the social construction of race discussed outside of papers and even outside the clinical psychotherapy setting.

The day was broken out into a series of workshops, where attendees could pick from topics like "integrating Black-centered-decolonizing paradigms as a pathways to healing and creating new narratives" or "activism to combat oppression." This model was interesting as it allowed attendees to pick what felt most relevant to where they were at in their process of understanding it all and acting on it. Across the board, the workshop leaders did an amazing job making some challenging and painful concepts accessible and digestible to community members. For those of us involved in public awareness and education, this model may be replicable for other baskets of inter-related topics and so I really appreciated all the work that went into producing such a well planned event.

Earlier this month I was able to attend The American Psychology Associations Healing Is Here Summit in Washington, D.C. Designed for the general public, the daylong summit took attendees through a variety of important concepts centered around overcoming trauma and oppression. Kelley Haynes-Mendez was one of the morning's keynote speakers, with a lecture focused on Living, Loving and Learning in Oppressive Systems. Dr. Haynes-Mendez was kind enough to speak with us before heading back home to her native Texas.

We’re here today to learn about trauma, oppression and healing. Not to cut things too finely, but for those of us in the Public Health sphere, what connections, broadly, might you draw between these topics and public health outcomes?

We have done some work in the field of psychology around health equity and social determinants of health. Out of that there is a subfield of psychology, community psychology, which applies principles of psychology at the community level. Those psychologists implement programs and work at the community level in order to attempt to achieve more equitable health outcomes for those populations. A lot of the research in that area centers around answering the question of “what are the social determinants of health?” with particular emphasis on exploring how racism, ageism and the other discriminations and oppressions impact society, but also how they impact individuals, families and communities. We have also begun to think about taking a population health approach in psychology; trying to leverage psychological science towards the idea of “there’s no health without mental health.” Community psychologists and population health psychologists are focusing on this area, in that we can’t achieve equitable health outcomes and address health disparities without addressing both the social determinants as well as the mental and behavioral health aspects.

Specifically with trauma, could you give some examples about how that connection tends to play out?

People who are vulnerable in the population for whatever reason have poorer health outcomes, just across the board and that very much includes having experienced trauma and the aftermath of these experiences. So people with mental health conditions, including traumatic impacts, are more vulnerable and have poorer health outcomes in other areas besides their mental health. There are many explanations around that; it could be that they are experiencing multiple-marginalizations, for example a person who is suffering with a mental health condition may also be experiencing poverty or another type of marginalization. This many times means they simply don’t have access to the care that they need for their conditions. Other times, untreated conditions also lead to poor health outcomes, because there are some basic standards of care that are not being achieved. Therefore, it’s important for mental health and public health practitioners to understand how it’s all interrelated and interconnected. We have learned to silo our disciplines; with mental health over here and primary healthcare over here, and then social work is somewhere else too. Programs with a “wraparound” service model are starting to emerge, where people can come to one person or organization not just for one thing, but come for their mental health, their housing, their healthcare challenges and whatever else they may need for their well being. That is a strategy that I understand to be successful. For psychology, for the last 7 or 8 years psychology has been focusing on integrated primary care, where mental health professionals are a part of the primary healthcare team. So that is a new and emerging way of working where we can better bring these connections together to serve.

For some regular non-academic people here in the states, when they hear “human rights,” I can’t help but wonder if their mind goes first to countries outside the US that are in crises, experiencing dictatorships or similar issues, and maybe not consider human rights as something we’re grappling with right here at home. What are your thoughts on the state of the idea of human rights here in the US?

I think we have to be really careful about the “American exceptionalism” idea that tends to permeate our culture when it comes to human rights issues. There are clearly people here in the US who are experiencing extreme poverty, racism and law enforcement violence. We have to really be careful to not let this internalized notion of American exceptionalism prevent us from labeling those trends as what they are, human rights crises. There can be a tendency to believe that human rights crises happen elsewhere, but not here. Something I’m fond of is the human rights approach, which are the foundational principles that support all human rights conventions, treaties, called the Panel Principles. It’s utilized by the WHO on how it structures its interventions and also used broadly in human rights contexts. When we as a discipline are building policy, interventions or other elements, we’re thinking about the Panel Principles. 

 Do you have any thoughts on how a more accurate or contemporary understanding of human rights is seeded here?

I think human rights education in the US is essential. Just so that we are educated on the fact that human rights exists, globally but also here for us. There’s an organization, The Human Rights Education Associates and their Dr. Felisia Tibbits, who do a lot of good work, both with UNESCO but also with our US universities. Dr. Tibbits was most recently at Columbia university. She does a lot of great work around human rights education. I also work with the University for Peace, which was established by the UN in the ‘80s and is on site in Costa Rica. They do a lot of global citizenship education, which is helping people see themselves as part of a global community. I think that type of education is really relevant to us here; if we can see ourselves in the experiences of someone else somewhere else, then we can see ourselves better as someone who is part of a global community.

You can read the full transcript of our interview with Kelley Haynes-Mendez here.