UPDATE 16
28 March 2025
Dear Supporter
Welcome to the March update. Here's what we are covering in this month's edition:
Lucy Beney reviews the Netflix drama Adolescence
Major breakthrough: Academic Journal critiques Critical Social Justice practice.
NHS England 'cancelled'
Overlooked Issues Related to Race and Mental Health: Live Virtual Workshop
NCF Locals Event Norwich 13 April: EDI in the NHS: What you Need to Know
Lucy Beney Reviews Netflix Drama Adolescence
As the culture wars rage over the Netflix drama Adolescence and cries of misogyny, anti-white racism, toxic masculinity, and moral panic abound, Lucy Beney takes a measured look at this drama, from the perspective of a school counsellor and psychotherapist. You can read her moving and insightful review here. Lucy points out that these heated debates, rather than addressing the "deeper and very uncomfortable aspects of 'where it all went wrong'"reflect "our desperate desire to look elsewhere" for answers. She regards this drama series as "a timely warning to pay much closer attention to what is happening to our children – and what is enabling this to happen".
This thoughtful review is an antidote to the angry debate that has been playing out on social media and elsewhere. Please share it widely and sign up to Lucy's new Substack here to read more of her work.
Major breakthrough: CSJ Journal of Social Work
One of our supporters has informed us of a major breakthrough in the world of social work. Arnold Cantú, a clinical social worker and psychotherapist in the US, contacted us about an article he has written for publication in a special issue of the Journal of Teaching in Social Work. This issue, titled: Beyond Ideological Mandates: Critical Reflections on Anti-Racist and Social Work Education, is dedicated to the critique of Critical Social Justice (CSJ) practice. Arnold asked us if we would like to post his article on the Save Mental Health website. We jumped at the opportunity and you can read the article here.
Arnold has also informed us that the entire special issue is open access. We are so grateful to him for letting us know and enabling us to share this with our supporters. Here is a link to the main editorial where you can view individual articles or download all of them. What is significant about this issue, is that it is the first time that an academic peer-reviewed journal has published a critique of CSJ.
The editors explain that the “galvanising spark” which led them to issue a call for papers was the response to events following the October 7 massacre by Hamas. Students and faculty were “signing petitions and joining protests that devalued Jewish lives and valorized violence in the name of anti-racist practice that deemed Jewish people as being on the wrong side of the ‘settler-colonialism’ or antiracist line.”
For the editors and contributors to this journal to take such a principled stand shows great courage. Readers in the UK may be interested to know that Jane Fenton, professor of social work at the University of Dundee, is one of those contributors. She has written about the dangers of teaching a CSJ perspective of society to students. Here is her article..
You can read more in Critical Therapy Antidote's (CTA) commentary here. Like CTA, we hope that other academic journals in the field of psychology and psychotherapy will follow suit.
NHS England 'cancelled'
Following the announcement by the Government that the quango NHS England is to be abolished we are wondering, here at Save Mental Health, what this might mean for the future of NHS EDI policies and initiatives. NHS England has successfully embedded EDI in the NHS, to the extent that applications to senior leadership positions now require candidates to declare their white privilege or sacrifice any possibility of advancement. EDI is also having a detrimental effect on staff who dare to take a position that challenges their Trust's policies, sometimes with shocking results, such as the recent case of nurse Jennifer Melle, who was accused of misgendering a male patient.
NHS England also played a major role in politicising clinical psychology training courses in the UK with its nine-point action plan. This plan required courses to introduce EDI and ideologically-driven 'anti-racist' policies, changing their content and structure. Each course received funds of £74K to increase the number of minority trainees and a further £20K to provide mentoring to minorities requiring help to gain a training place. Improving access to minority trainees is a laudable initiative. However, the politicization of courses that has accompanied this initiative has done considerable damage. The scientific underpinnings and teaching of clinical skills that should form the bedrock of clinical psychology training have been undermined, and some students are expressing concern that their training is not fit for purpose. We can only hope that Health Secretary Wes Streeting has the courage to strip EDI out of the NHS, although we won't hold our breath.
Overlooked Issues Related to Race and Mental Health: Live Virtual Workshop
Carole Sherwood of Save Mental Health will be one of the presenters at the Open Therapy Institute's live virtual workshop on Saturday, 5th April, 2025, 5-7.00pm BST/12-2.00pm EDT. Carole's talk, based on her recent article in OTI's journal New Frontiers, considers the effects of racial ideology in the arts and popular culture.
The theme of the workshop is Overlooked Issues Related to Race and Mental Health. The promotional material explains: As the ideal of “colour-blindness” has been attacked, new challenges have emerged for psychotherapy patients. People are increasingly seeing themselves in racial terms, leading some people to feel attacked and demonized and others to become more anxious or even paranoid. This workshop will explore these themes in detail, with a special focus on how these issues can shape mental illness and how therapists can improve care related to these experiences.
The other workshop presenters are : Jaco van Zyl, a chartered clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst and a co-director, with Carole, of Critical Therapy Antidote; Omar Sultan Haque, a psychiatrist, philosopher and, currently, researcher at Harvard Medical School's Program in Psychiatry and the Law; and Craig Frisby, recently retired from the School Psychology training program at the University of Missouri, Columbia and lead editor for the book Ideological Bias in Psychology: Nature, Scope and Solutions.
New Culture Forum Locals event Norwich, Sunday 13 April, 2025, 2.45pm
A reminder that Carole Sherwood will be giving a talk to NCF Locals in Norwich on Sunday 13th April, titled: EDI in the NHS: What you need to know. If you live in the area and would like to come along, you can register as an NCF Locals member (it's free) here and request a free ticket. It would be good to see you there!
An amusing aside: Norfolk & Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust's 'Race Equity' Conference, mentioned in last month's Update, was due to be held on 31st March but has been postponed because the organisers had overlooked the fact that Eid takes place on that date! Perhaps it will be held over Easter instead?
RECOMMENDATION
Dave Clements, the father of a son with severe autism, gave an interesting talk at last year's Battle of Ideas during a debate titled: Neurodiversity to Gender Dysphoria: a problem of over diagnosis'. Save Mental Health has been following Dave since then and we recommend his latest Substack article in which he talks about the neurodiversity movement and the contradictions inherent within it. You can read Dave's article here.
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