Healing ethno-racial trauma in Latinx immigrant communities: Cultivating hope, resistance, and action.

Abstract

Latinx immigrants living in the United States often experience the negative effects of systemic oppression, which may lead to psychological distress, including ethno-racial trauma. We define ethno-racial trauma as the individual and/or collective psychological distress and fear of danger that results from experiencing or witnessing discrimination, threats of harm, violence, and intimidation directed at ethno-racial minority groups. This form of trauma stems from a legacy of oppressive laws, policies, and practices. Using an intersectionality framework, this article discusses the complex ways in which interlocking systems of oppression (e.g., racism, ethnocentrism, nativism, sexism) and anti-immigrant policies impact Latinxs individuals, families, and communities. The article also presents a framework to stimulate healing from ethno-racial trauma titled, HEART (Healing Ethno And Racial Trauma). Grounded in the principles of Liberation Psychology and trauma-informed care, the framework is composed of four phases. Each phase is accompanied by a goal to assist clinicians in helping individuals, families, and communities to achieve growth, wellness, and healing. The main objective of each phase is for Latinx immigrants to find relief, gain awareness, and cope with systemic oppression while encouraging resistance and protection from the external forces that cause ethno-racial trauma. Overall, our intention and hopeful expectation is that the content presented in this article serves as a call to action for psychologists to make psychology a Sanctuary Discipline by using and integrating intersectionality theory, traumainformed care, and Liberation Psychology into policy, research, and practice with Latinx immigrants.

Community Healing and Resistance Through Storytelling: A Framework to Address Racial Trauma in Africana Communities

“…Racial trauma occurs within an oppressive sociopolitical context (Comas-Díaz et al, 2019). Treatment models that promote a client’s resistance strategies (e.g., filing charges against racist perpetrators and lobbying for antiracist policies; Bryant-Davis & Ocampo, 2006); social action (e.g., framing racism as a form of ethnoviolence while advocating for racial equality; Comas-Díaz, 2016); and connections among individuals, families, and communities to their collective cultural strengths (Chavez-Dueñas et al, 2019) highlight the importance of critical consciousness in the healing process. The need for clinical solutions is important but limited without community healing interventions that develop collective critical discourse and actions to dismantle systems of oppression (Grills et al, 2016; Hartmann et al, 2019).…”

Using the Multicultural and Social Justice Counseling Competencies to Decolonize Counseling Practice: The Important Roles of Theory, Power, and Action

“…Martín‐Baró (1994) developed liberation psychology based on the work he witnessed of social action movements in El Salvador and Latin American. He believed that liberation psychology would take up the perspectives of the oppressed and support those who experience oppression to reclaim their histories, resist sociopolitical structures that sought to oppress them, and use cultural methods from their ancestors to organize and strengthen their cultures and traditions (Chavez, Fernandez, Hipolito‐Delgado, & Rivera, 2016; Chavez‐Dueñas, Perez‐Chavez, Adames, & Salas, 2019). Liberation psychology in many ways is parallel to the work of Freire (1970), which called for educators to support individuals and communities as they transform their own oppression and world.…”

Decolonising ideas of healing in medical education

“…Demographic studies show ethnic differences in diagnosis of psychiatric disease 31. However, attention needs to be paid to research into intergenerational trauma originating from the legacy of slavery and subjugation of an indigenous way of life 32. Decoloniality academics have proposed that those affected should be approached by being both respectful of the indigenous system of beliefs and healing systems of their ancestors as well as making available standard psychological therapies.…”