ABSTRACT

Just therapy was developed at New Zealand’s Family Centre as a critical response to Eurocentric family therapy, which often fails to consider the cultural impact of psychological and social health. Just therapy endeavors to evaluate the impact of marginalization on family interaction and liberate culturally marginalized families from the experience of Eurocentric mental health treatment (Tamasese & Waldegrave, 1994). The central aim of just therapy is to broaden the traditional scope of family therapy practice by creating new meaning that individuals and families can apply to their experiences of discrimination in the critical contexts of culture, gender, and socioeconomic status Waldegrave, 2000). Just therapy was established out of a reflexive process in which therapists at New Zealand’s Family Centre recognized that their traditional treatment was ineffective against the socioeconomic realities of their clientele. Subsequently, therapists were unable to treat the salient problems with which families presented. Indeed, as Tamasese and Waldegrave (1994) observe, traditional therapy cannot sufficiently handle the cultural impact of poverty and discrimination. Therapies that fail to address these issues lack the tools necessary to treat the deleterious impact of social inequity, cultural marginalization, and health disparities and often leave people “happy in poverty” ( Waldegrave, 2005, p. 272). Family therapy that fails to assess these foundational issues subsequently labels symptomology (i.e., family stress, depression, etc.) as the presenting problem.