The Myth of Social Mobility: Subjective Social Mobility and Mental Health

A common assumption is that upward mobility produces positive psychological outcomes. However, status-based identity framework and social class worldview model propose that perceived social mobility in either direction will lead to increased distress. Based on this claim, we examined relations among subjective social mobility, life satisfaction, and mental health using polynomial regression with response surface mapping. In Study 1, groups that experienced both subjective downward and upward mobility reported more depressive symptomatology than groups that remained in middle or upper social statuses in a sample of 567 adults. We did not find significant relations between subjective social mobility and life satisfaction. In Study 2, both groups that experienced subjective downward and upward mobility reported more depressive and academic distress symptomatology than groups that remained in middle or upper social social statuses in a sample of 7,598 clients from college counseling center data. The results provide insights relevant to multicultural counseling and training.

A Qualitative Investigation of the Experiences of People Who Panhandle

U.S. Census data from 2016 indicate that 12.7% of the population may be living in poverty, a total of 40.6 million people. The most visible among this group facing unemployment or underemployment are people who panhandle, characterized by soliciting requests for assistance on street corners or highway exits. If issues of poverty are to be addressed adequately, the characteristics of these populations need to be better understood. In this qualitative study, we sought to understand the experiences of people who panhandle through in-person interviews. Participants included 9 individuals (6 men and 3 women). A consensual qualitative research approach was used to analyze the transcribed interviews resulting in 7 domains. We discuss results in the context of the psychology of working theory. Implications include the integration of social justice and vocational psychology among counseling psychologists working with clients who panhandle.

Social Class Fragility and College Students’ Career Decision-Making at a Private University

The present study examined the role of social class in the career decision-making of undergraduate students attending a private university. Grounded theory was used to describe the process of social class and undergraduates’ career interests and plans. Interviews with undergraduate students ( N = 21) resulted in four categories and 13 axial codes. The grounded theory emerging from the data was labeled, social class fragility. Social class fragility captured the career goals and behaviors associated with participants’ striving for an acceptable career choice, based upon their social class contexts. The contextual factors described by participants included relational influences, social class consciousness, and vocational privilege. Results are discussed in terms of career interventions with college students attending universities that encapsulate upper middle-class norms.

Class at the Intersection of Race and Gender

Consistent with psychology’s call to action for an inclusive and intentional focus on social class, we conducted a content analysis examining class variables relative to race and gender variables in articles over a 15-year period in The Counseling Psychologist and the Journal of Counseling Psychology. Articles were classified by degree of inclusion of these variables, resulting in three categories: mentioned, integrated, and primary. Despite the recent trend toward class inclusion, only 560 of 1,440 studies (39%) included all three variables at any level. Articles where all variables were “Primary” comprised only 1.9% ( n = 28) of the articles we reviewed. Using a qualitative content analysis and intersectionality lens, only 15 of the 28 studies thoroughly integrated class, race, and gender variables. Results highlight a recent, significant increase in attention to class issues, as well as the continued need to place class analysis on par with other important diversity variables. Implications are discussed.

Integrating Service Learning and Difficult Dialogues Pedagogy to Advance Social Justice Training

The integration of service learning and difficult dialogues pedagogy is one avenue for enhancing counseling psychology social justice training. We provide an illustration of this integrative model including advocacy and systems perspectives, and propose that the model can be applied to other service learning foci within counseling psychology training. The article presents an ongoing project that provides counseling graduate students the opportunity to implement skills in career and employment counseling with homeless and near homeless individuals, as well as to develop greater cultural sensitivity and humility. The model provides a structural framework for understanding poverty, homelessness, and bureaucratic systems of care as essential to knowledge, awareness, and skill development for social justice advocacy regarding social class and economic inequalities. Difficult dialogues are incorporated during pre-service, engagement, and debriefing stages of the training experience as a means of promoting best practices for social justice training in counseling psychology.

Educating Undergraduate Students to Work With Children of Abused Women

Student learning was assessed in an innovative university–community partnership in which undergraduate students enrolled, first, in a didactic course on intimate partner violence and, subsequently, in a service-learning course where they worked with children living in a shelter for survivors of intimate partner violence. Data were collected at the start and end of the first semester, and at the end of the second semester. Quantitative and qualitative methods indicated that students gained knowledge regarding intimate partner violence, resources available to survivors, and how to respond to a friend in an abusive relationship. The students’ perspectives on how they changed as well as the strengths and limitations of this study are discussed.

Understanding the Link Between Multiple Oppressions and Depression Among African American Women

The purpose of our study was to examine the multiple oppression experiences of sexual objectification, racism, and gendered racism as predictors of depressive symptoms among a clinical sample of low-income African American women. In addition, we examined coping with oppression via internalization (i.e., the tendency to attribute responsibility or the cause of an oppressive event to oneself) as a mediator between these three intersecting forms of oppression and depressive symptoms. Participants included 144 African American women who sought some type of mental health treatment at a U.S. southeastern, public, urban, university-affiliated hospital that attends to a primarily indigent and underserved population. The results of our mediational analysis using bootstrapping provided support for a theorized model in which coping with oppressive events via internalization mediated the links between sexual objectification and depression and between racist events and depression but not between gendered racism and depression. In addition, a unique and direct effect of racist events on depression was found. Finally, the four variables in the model accounted for 42% of variance in depression scores. The study includes implications for future research and clinical work such as exploration of other mediators and the importance of comprehensive intake assessments and multicultural/feminist coping interventions.

Poverty and mental health practice: within and beyond the 50-minute hour

Despite the high and increasing prevalence of poverty in the United States, psychologists and allied professionals have done little to develop mental health interventions that are tailored to the specific sociocultural experiences of low-income families. In this article, we describe the sociocultural stressors that accompany the material deprivations of poverty, and the mental health difficulties to which they often give rise. Next, we outline the psychosocial and class-related issues surrounding low-income adults' access to and use of mental health services and suggest a conceptual framework to guide the modification of mental health practice to better accommodate poor peoples' complex needs. This framework describes opportunities for practice modification at three levels of intervention, beginning at the individual level of traditional individual psychotherapy and subsequently targeting increasingly broad contextual elements of poverty.

Life Without Work

Unemployment is a stark reality in today’s economic climate, and many Americans report a fear of loss or decrease in social status as a result of unexpected unemployment. Despite vocational psychology’s emphasis on work as a domain of life, very little exploration on how social class shifts impact workers has been conducted. One way to rectify the current gaps in the literature is to consider the integration of multiple theories that address different aspects of social class identity and the role of work in people’s lives. Intersectional approaches, the Social Class Worldview Model, and the Psychology Working perspectives are discussed in this article as applicable to life without work, particularly in relation to unemployment among underserved populations. Multidisciplinary literature is highlighted and integrated to inform the current understanding of these problems. Implications for psychologists and career counselors conducting research, practice, and public policy are discussed.

Sexual Objectification of Women: Advances to Theory and Research 1ψ7

Objectification theory provides an important framework for understanding, researching, and intervening to improve women’s lives in a sociocultural context that sexually objectifies the female body and equates a woman’s worth with her body’s appearance and sexual functions. The purpose of this Major Contribution is to advance theory, research, practice, and training related to the sexual objectification of women. The purpose of this article is to introduce readers to objectification theory and related research, extend objectification theory to our understanding of women’s substance use and/or abuse and immersed forms of sexual objectification via sexually objectifying environments, and provide an overview of this Major Contribution on Sexual Objectification of Women.

Beyond the 50-minute hour: increasing control, choice, and connections in the lives of low-income women

Although poverty is associated with a range of mental health difficulties among women in this country, mainstream mental health interventions are not sufficient to meet the complex needs of poor women. This article argues that stress, powerlessness, and social isolation should become primary targets of our interventions, as they are key mediators of the relationship between poverty and emotional distress, particularly for women. Indeed, if ways are not found to address these conditions directly, by increasing women's control, choice, and connections, the capacity to improve the emotional well-being of impoverished women will remain limited at best. This is the first of 5 articles that comprise a special section of the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, called "Beyond the 50-Minute Hour: Increasing Control, Choice, and Connections in the Lives of Low-Income Women." Together, these articles explore the nature and impact of a range of innovative mental health interventions that are grounded in a deep understanding of the experience of poverty. This introduction: (a) describes briefly how mainstream approaches fail to address the poverty-related mental health needs of low-income women; (b) illuminates the role of stress, powerlessness, and social isolation in women's lives; (c) highlights the ways in which the articles included in this special section address each of these by either adapting traditional mental health practices to attend to poverty's role in participants' lives or adapting community-based, social-justice-oriented interventions to attend to participants' mental health; and (d) discusses the research and evaluation implications of expanding mental health practices to meet the needs of low-income communities.

Psychological interventions in the context of poverty: participatory action research as practice

What innovations of socially just psychological practice exist for mental health professionals working in the context of poverty? This article argues for participatory action research (PAR) as a new horizon not only with regard to the creation of knowledge but as a community-based practice/action that promotes the emotional well-being of people surviving poverty and other forms of oppression. After the presentation of this argument, an ongoing PAR project in a poor urban community is described. This article explores its impact on all participants through observations from field notes along with the results of a focus group in which community co-researchers contributed their experiences of PAR. Finally, key practice-related considerations and other implications for mental health practitioners are proposed.

When crises collide: how intimate partner violence and poverty intersect to shape women's mental health and coping?

Until recently, the connection between intimate partner violence (IPV) and persistent poverty had been largely ignored. Recent research indicates, however, that the two phenomena cooccur at high rates; produce parallel effects; and, in each other's presence, constrain coping options. Therefore, both external situational, and internal psychological difficulties are missed when women contending with both poverty and IPV are viewed through the lens of just one or just the other. This article describes mental health consequences for women who contend with both partner violence and poverty. It proposes that the stress, powerlessness, and social isolation at the heart of both phenomena combine to produce posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, and other emotional difficulties. The article also introduces the term ''survival-focused coping'' to describe women's methods of coping with IPV in the context of poverty and highlights the role that domestic violence advocates, mental health providers, and researchers can play in addressing these tightly intertwined phenomena.