Human Rights: Career Insights from Mental Health Experts

12:40PM Jan 12, 2024

Speakers:

Maureen O'Connor, PhD

Kirby Huminuik, PhD

Sita Patel, PhD

Gabe Twose, PhD

Keywords:

work

human rights

psychology

mental health

kirby

apa

psychologists

sita

gabe

community

policy

trauma

focused

thinking

people

important

support

heard

research

learn

Hello, and welcome. For those in our audience who are not familiar with the overarching concept of human rights. Today, we're going to talk about what do we mean when we talk about human rights and how psychologists, and other mental health professionals can bring a focus on human rights into their work, their clinical work, their research, and their policy advocacy. The three experts we have with us today have done just that. They've dedicated their careers as psychologists to focusing on how psychology and behavioral health as fields can contribute to and advance human rights in our world. So what do we mean by human rights? Human rights are fundamental entitlements derived from the mere fact of being human. Human rights are universal and interdependent, which means that they apply to everyone and everywhere, and each right depends on all other rights to be fulfilled. Furthermore, human rights are both morally justifiable, and legally recognized by the UN and other organizations, which means that while they have a basis in human values and ethics, they also have legal consequences. Today, we're going to talk to our three experts about how mental health professionals scholars and advocates have critically important roles to play in delivering clinical services grounded in human rights, studying the conditions under which human rights can be advanced or undermined, and advocating for policies and practices that best support the human rights of all. So hello, and welcome to Palo Alto University's podcast Talking Mental Health Careers. I'm Maureen O'Connor, president of Palo Alto University, a psychologist and a lawyer with training in the intersection of law and human behavior. I spent 18 years at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and City University of New York, and I've been here at Palo Alto University going on eight years. I'm active in the American Psychological Association and the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues. But most importantly, for today's conversation, I had the great responsibility and the great pleasure of chairing an important task force for the American Psychological Association focused on human rights. And we have three outstanding psychologists joining us today who are at the front lines of clinical research and advocacy at the intersection of psychology and human rights. I'll do brief introductions, and then we'll get into our conversation. First, we have Dr. Kirby Huminuik, who is a psychologist and director of Counseling Services at the University of British Columbia. She is responsible for the integration and delivery of mental health services across student health and well being at UBC. She also provides oversight of masters and doctoral training programs, while providing clinical supervision for doctoral trainees. Her research and community work is focused at the intersection between counseling psychology and human rights, and she's published academic and community based research on refugee mental health. She's worked on projects funded by the United Nations voluntary fund for victims of torture, and the Canadian International Development Agency, and provides pro bono psychological assessment for refugees. Welcome, Kirby. Thanks. Next like to introduce Dr. Sita Patel, who is a professor of psychology at Palo Alto University. She's a clinical and community psychologist with research interests in global mental health, culture and context as they relate to immigrant mental health for current projects, among many, including APA Division 27 funded longitudinal school based study of risk and resiliency among newcomer, adolescent newcomer adolescent immigrants, a community partnership focused on refugee mental health and access to treatment for trauma, and the USAID funded study of trauma healing as a component of peacebuilding in the Central African Republic. Dr. Patel has expertise in community based participatory partnership research, which I hope we'll talk a little bit about today, and teaches doctoral level courses on cultural competency, mental health disparities and global mental health among other topics. She currently sits on the board of directors for Partnerships for Trauma Recovery, a Berkeley based nonprofit providing mental health and advocacy services for refugee victims of global human rights abuses. Welcome, Sita and finally, we have Dr. Gabe Twose with us who Gabe is the senior international affairs officer and main representative to the United Nations at the American Psychological Association, where he works to advance and apply psychology globally, with a particular focus on human rights. UN priorities include global mental health, climate change, and anti racism efforts. He previously worked as a lobbyist for APA and for the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, using psychological science to advocate for civil rights related issues. His many publications relevant ones, including the edited International Handbook of Peace and Reconciliation, and a chapter in the recent Cambridge Handbook of Psychology and Human Rights. Welcome, welcome, Gabe. You can see we have a fantastic set of three folks joining us today. So before we dive into your particular focus and work on human rights, our listeners would love to learn about your day jobs a little bit more. What does a work day in your life look like from your various perspectives that you bring to this conversation? Let's start with us, Sita.

Thank you, Dr. O'Connor. We were talking about this earlier. And I love the question because our day jobs are often quite a mixture of things. And I sometimes have the feeling like, Oh, I wish I could just spend all day you know, writing a paper on this topic that we're talking about today or in the field, really feeling a direct impact. And sometimes we have time to do that. But often what I'm doing is a lot of teaching and training. So there's sort of an indirect impact in human rights when you're involved in training people who have career aspirations to move in that direction. So I was thinking about this just for today, I had a lab meeting this morning with about 15 doctoral students who have all different kinds of interests, from immigrant mental health to global trauma, intervention work, runs the gamut. And so with that, and you know, helping them with their dissertations, and we work together to disseminate or, or share the results of our research projects. So things like going to conferences and publishing papers. And then the other piece of my day job that's most active right now is working to help run the PhD program. So we have a clinical training team, and I'm a member of that team. And so I assist in just the day to day running, whether it's student issues or courses or updating manuals, things like that. So there's a lot of different things that I think when you get into any job, but in this field, in particular, I think, you know, we don't often think of the diversity of tasks that we're we're all involved in.

I actually love that about our work in higher education. How about you, Kirby?

I would share the same thought as Sita, that there's just such a tremendous variety of things that I do every day as the director of counseling services, lots of hiring lots of, you know, supporting staff through kind of clinical issues, thinking about the program as a whole, and how to support 60,000 students and their mental health. You know, it's, it's, it's a lot, and it's, it's fairly fast paced. And I think, you know, as you said, Sita, sometimes I wonder, you know, where is the human rights thread through all of this, but it's always there. And I think that's, that's something that's really interesting to me to note, you know, thinking about particular programming, and how can we support, you know, equity deserving students, you know, and help them reach their mental health goals. We're working right now, on a project around decolonization, thinking about Canadians legacy of colonization, and how does this impact mental health and our our provision of mental health our thinking about psychology, and so really trying to unravel some of those things and learn together about doing things differently. So I wouldn't say that, you know, while I don't have a, it's not in my job description anywhere that I'm thinking about mental health, but it's thinking about human rights, but it certainly is very much a part of the lens I bring to the everyday work. You know, and then there's 69 emails a day.

Most important part of forget all that human rights work. Let's get to those emails. That sounds really exciting. It's basically you're kind of providing the mental health for a small city is what it sounds like. So.

That's absolutely it. Yeah,

yeah. Love that and Gabe, you are in a different environment. You're there at the American Psychological Association, which serves uh some several 100,000 psychologists, so tell us about your day job.

That's right. APA telework. So I spend all day at my computer, I for better or for worse, I spend a lot of time writing or editing reports or letters or statements. For example, Sita and I are working together right now on an APA taskforce on immigration and health, which I feel fairly confident saying we'll incorporate the Human Rights framing to some extent, you spend a lot of time in meetings with other psychologists around the world. For example, there's a group called the global network of psychologists for human rights. I think you mentioned earlier that I work at the UN. So I spend a lot of time meeting with UN staff, for example, we spent a lot of time this year working with the mission from Mexico, on a General Assembly Resolution on mental health, which does frame mental health as a human rights issue. And like Kirby, I spent way too much time trying to beat back the rising tide of emails. I really like teleworking, but it does make the in person meetings more special. I'll be traveling to Geneva just after Thanksgiving to participate in an event, we're co hosting on the role of emotions and affect and motivating sustainable behaviors. I'll take the opportunity while in Geneva to meet with UN staff there, for example, at the World Health Organization, and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, including those who specialize in the right to health. So I'm really looking forward to that. That

sounds exciting, I'd like to be in your suitcase and come right over there. That sounds terrific. So at some point, you all decided to be to pursue your doctoral degree in psychology. So obviously, you had an interest in the in the field. So talk a little bit about your educational or career paths. And at kind of the point like what what was it that kind of tipped you to begin thinking about human rights? I think that's kind of the next, and maybe, Kirby, we'll start with you on this one.

Well, um, I feel like I went the other way, I think that I went from human rights into psychology. After my undergrad, I I was really keen to kind of get out into the world. And and I didn't know I didn't know that I had the analysis or the framework for thinking about, you know, what, what that work would look like, I didn't have the words, a human rights career. But I had wanted to spend some time either in Latin America or in India, and I was able to connect with a community of folks in India who were working in a small school, we're really interested in sort of transformational education, towards communities of peace. I don't think they'd put it in quite those words, but, but that was a community that I lived and worked with for a number of years. And in thinking about sort of what I was going to do next, I thought, in the western context, psychology was probably closer a place where I could ask these kinds of questions more than education. And so I came back to Canada, and started working towards my Master's in Counseling Psychology in the week of September 2001. So we started our classes, and I spent pretty much every weekend in anti war protests, and met lots and lots of friends and people sort of through that movement. And that led me to working in a small NGO for refugee rights, and working with survivors of torture. So it was really kind of a lot of happenstance. But really following that, that interest or that passion to, to think about human rights as kind of a broad, you know, category. So, you know, Amnesty International was a big part of that volunteering, but that working with survivors of torture for about five years, through the kind of war on terror, so I think that was really where a lot of my understanding or the deepening of my understanding of both psychology, the intersection between psychology and human rights and healing as sort of a form of justice. So, yeah.

The timing was that's, that's very powerful. Very powerful. I was in New York City that day in Brooklyn. So I certainly well appreciate that. Gabe, how about you? What did you do? Which way did you? Did you come into psych and then human rights or the other way around? Or both maybe.

I really resonated with what Kirby said that I'd always been inclined toward human rights, I think but didn't necessarily have the language to articulate that. I would say it really took off when I was in college, when I was an undergrad, my parents moved to South Africa at the time from the US. And I would spend summers living with them. And I learned about apartheid and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. I was incredibly fortunate to meet a former Constitutional Court justice named Albie Sachs, who wrote a wonderful book called The Softer Vengeance of a Freedom Fighter. Just kind of from there, I moved on to Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, etc. All of them so inspiring. I ended up doing some work in Johannesburg at an NGO called the Center for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation. We did lots of different things. And at the time, they were in the process of launching the International Journal of Transitional Justice. So I learned about this field of transitional justice and how psychologists, particularly peace, psychologists could apply their expertise in that realm. And based on that, I ended up going to grad school, where I did some research on youth perceptions of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. And I wanted to look at a contemporary truth commission. So I spent a year in Liberia doing my doctoral research on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission there. And it all kind of took off from there.

Wow. I can I know our audience is very much appreciating the depth of the experience that you're all bringing to us today. So Sita tell us a little bit about your path. I think

there are so many ways to paint that picture. And I started at a very early stage. I think I grew up in San Francisco, my mother was an elementary school teacher. And I think probably the first things I started noticing were differences in educational standards and access and quality and huge differences across the city. And so and I started in high school, maybe doing some sort of volunteering in schools, I remember volunteering in her classroom. And just sort of realizing that a lot of the kids that she was teaching, were really going to have a hard time engaging in school because of a lot of life circumstances that were really challenging in their communities. So I think that as sort of educational justice is one arm that initially got me interested in, in this work. And before graduate school, I worked at a clinic in the Mission District of San Francisco, that served immigrant families, and I was placed in a middle school. And one of the things I really noticed there was that a lot of the kids again, really hard time, sort of connecting with what was going on in the classroom, maybe behavioral problems. And there's a teacher trying to manage like 30 kids. And so the kid who's causing a lot of behavioral issues is, you know, sent out and so I was the counselor. And then when you get that kid one on one and learn all about the circumstances that are happening, whether that's exposure to trauma, or you know, violence or issues in the home or undiagnosed ADHD or all kinds of things, it felt like a justice and human rights kind of gap. And the resources just aren't always there to be able to identify those gaps. So that found me then into the space of graduate school and working with an advisor who focused on her niche was teacher expectancy effects, and how the expectations that teachers have research shows is often race based. And the expectations that teachers have are very much connected to the achievement of kids. So that gap and the educational gap that she studied was how I I initially started graduate school. But then the other arm, which is also starting quite early is that my father is an Indian immigrant to East Africa. His family is an immigrant family in East Africa. He was born in the island of Zanzibar, and there was a revolution in the early 60s. And so the whole family had to leave and watching and just sort of seeing the very different life paths that each of his siblings had, based on what they were exposed to, at the time their age. Huge for him, you know, he tells stories of like, leaving in the middle of the night on a boat with his family jewels in a gas container in the boat. And he went to London and was able to start his his college education because he was 18. So the timing was good for him. He had other I think, strengths that allowed him to thrive in this very new environment. But for some of his family members, they were stuck there and exposed to violence for an ongoing period of time. And that was, I think, a real challenge for them. So it's a long way to say that I think these two kind of arms are what got me involved in both working with youth and families and educational human rights, and then also thinking about the needs of migrants and how to help them adapt and thrive around the world.

What I'm really hearing from all of you is that, you know, and I think it's always so important for people who are thinking about their careers and thinking about how to go, very seldom is it linear, right? Very seldom you say, Well, I'm going to do this, and that'll let me do that. And then I'll do that. It's more like I have these life's circumstances, I had these experiences, then I had this opportunity. And then I met so and so right, there's so much that goes into, we can look back and sort of thread it together. But I think it's helpful for people to realize like they're there right now, people are building their, their path. And they may not yet know what that looks like. But if there could be a human rights thread, there's, you're kind of showing the path for that. So So I really appreciate that perspective. So let's talk a little bit more specifically about sort of about some of the work that you that you do or you've done. That highlights kind of what it means to focus your career in human rights. And maybe you could share a project a specific project or two that that that would kind of give people a better understanding of what this work looks like in practice, and you sort of touched on it a little bit in some of the work, you're already doing what you've already described, but I'm gonna start with you Gabe, because you're you're actually doing it right at this moment. It sounds like so. So let's, let's hear from you first on this, and anybody else can jump in. But go ahead, Gabe.

I have worked and continue to work on human rights, policy and advocacy to get better policy at various levels. I think when people think of the word policy, they often think of public policy. But that's not the only way to think of policy. There can be you know, educational policy for many of us on this meeting right now. For me, a lot of it is institutional policy, APA. I think that the work that I did with Maureen and Kirby to develop a human rights policy, APA was tremendously valuable. I mean, that took us what four years maybe longer to write this report of psychology and human rights and why that was relevant for APA. And based on that report, we managed to come up with a policy which was adopted by the APA Council of Representatives really establishing human rights as central to everything APA does. That's really a powerful thing. So that kind of policy is really important, I think, in terms of public policy. So I mentioned earlier, we did a lot of work advocating for a general assembly, resolution on mental health. It was introduced by the mission for Mexico, it was passed, essentially unanimously by the General Assembly. So we partnered with psychology associations from around the world to advocate for that resolution. We arranged meetings between national level psychology leaders, and then the UN staff from their country. So for example, the president of the Psych Association in Nepal would meet with the ambassador from Nepal, and speak about why mental health was important in their country, why it should be considered a human right. And one then requested that the Nepalese mission to the UN co sponsor that resolution, that was incredibly rewarding work, bringing in these psychology leaders from all around the world. So it wasn't just an American led initiative, which is not really a fruitful way to go at the UN. Another UN example, earlier this year, we partnered with the missions from the United States and from South Africa to hold an event on the mental health impacts of racism at a UN event called the Permanent Forum on people of African descent. Another really wonderful opportunity to get relevant psychological science into the hands of international decision makers. Before that, I've worked as a domestically focused lobbyist that I think you mentioned Maureen, so I would I'd be on Capitol Hill advocating for policies and programs related to sexual and gender minority rights, our socio economic status, things like safety net programs. And we would use different strategies to get that relevant psychological science in the hands of lawmakers, lots of meetings, signing coalition letters, holding briefings, hearings, whatever it would be. The one thing that I would flag here is that wasn't always useful to use a human rights framing, like I knew myself, we were talking about human rights. But you've got to think about your audience. If you're going to meet with a certain office who comes at issues from a certain kind of perspective. It can backfire to try to claim something as a human right, if they don't see it that way. So you can tailor your arguments depending on who you're speaking to.

And I think that's the challenge of policy work. Right? I think you've you've been doing this work now for so many years. But I when I when I talk with students, especially I think that is a challenge, right? There's sort of a right answer. And we want people to, to see it a certain way. But sometimes you have to, you have to shape it so that people can see it, through their through the lens that they bring. So I really appreciate that. Sita, how about you? Can you give us some? I know you have numerous so I'd love to hear from some about some of your work.

Yeah, I think it's so interesting to hear about first that really sort of broad and structural level, systemic level of policy level. So why don't I share a couple of much more micro examples. And I would say, an overarching goal or agenda in my work, whatever type of work it is to elevate and shine a light on unheard voices. So often, the folks who are involved in human rights abuses, don't have a platform, whether that's because of socio economic circumstances, or access or awareness. And so I think what I like to do and try to do as an academic, and with the privilege of having a platform like this podcasts, or like publishable research or anything like that, even public, you know, public kinds of communication, is to really use that to shine a light on human rights related topics. So a couple of examples, I'll share one old and one newer, the old one was another kind of building block, I think, in my path toward doing work in human rights. When I was in graduate school, and I was at UC Berkeley and focused on the educational teacher kind of work that I spoke about. I did want to broaden to do international work, and I ended up reaching out, like folks have already said, it's kind of happenstance, my graduate advisor, knew somebody in South Africa named Leslie Schwartz. And so he I reached out to him and he invited me to work with him at the Human Sciences Research Council in Cape Town, his area of focus is disability. And what my job was for one summer in 2005, was to go around South Africa and interview constituents, leaders from different kinds of disability groups. So sometimes that was mental health disability, sometimes it was physical disabilities, people with hearing loss, all kinds of things. And they were basically conversations. And it was this really interesting role because I was very much an outsider. In interviewing people from different community groups and agencies, I was able to connect with people as an outsider in a way that I think was less threatening than if I were from a particular ethnic or other kind of group in South Africa. And so that was really an introduction to being able to use my platform to elevate voices that otherwise we're going unheard. And a lot of the topics that came up were things like the gaps that existed between stated policies or laws and what was actually happening in practice. So for example, one story I'll never forget is a mother who was describing her son who was in a wheelchair, and he wanted to go to school, but the only reason he couldn't go to school is that the doorways were not big enough for his wheelchair to pass through. And there's no there wasn't enough oversight to go to all the schools and make sure that they were in compliance with these stated policies. So lots of examples like that a basic human right of access to education was not happening because of a very simple logistical thing and in not having a platform to share that beyond her community that wasn't something that was really attended to. And then a newer example, I was a consultant with an organization called the Freedom Fund, which is an NGO, based in London, they do work worldwide. And their overarching agenda is to combat modern slavery. So people who work in inhumane work conditions around the world, a lot of the work they do is economically driven, or legally driven. So they kind of come at it from a lot of different angles. And they are one of the only organizations that also has a mental health and trauma lens. So they have programming in countries like Nepal, and India, and Thailand, that are really trying to educate and provide trauma services for people who are involved in very inhumane, very human rights oriented abuses in their lives. And so my work there was to review all of these programs and the mental health component and offer lessons learned. One of the things we learned, for example, is that they did a what's called a task shifting approach, they trained local community leaders to deliver psychoeducation and mental health kinds of interventions. But then there wasn't enough oversight and supervision for those individuals. So there was becoming kind of a cycle of trauma being passed to these individuals who weren't receiving enough support. So something like that, again, they weren't necessarily, you know, major policy changes in the world, but being able to have an interview over Skype with somebody who was living in another context and being able to bring that back to the people who fund these programs and say, they need more support in order to do this work. So those are my two examples.

I love those two examples, because they're, they're, you're right, you sort of going from, you know, very broad policy to try to implement human rights at a very, you know, broad policy level down to okay, this person can't get into the school, and how do we, how do we bring that voice? So that's really great. Well, I don't know, Kirby, you might have to fit in the middle somewhere?

I think so. Yeah. From the, from the kind of larger policy creation or policy informing conversations that that we all had, with the task force. I think that that maybe I came to the taskforce report in a, from a, from a more grassroots place, you know, thinking about the work with survivors of torture, and how that really motivated me to do something about this problem, you know, of psychologists and torture. And, you know, having worked with refugee survivors of torture in Canada, and I was invited to Mexico to collaborate with a number of human rights organizations who are supporting indigenous activists in southern Mexico. And, I mean, it's a hilarious story, because we got this funding. And then I realized I was pregnant, and I thought, Oh, well, I have a year of maternity leave. So let's go and baby on my back off, we went to work with with communities in southern Mexico, and they would pass him around and give him treats. And you know, then we would be in these really impassioned discussions about liberation theology and indigenous human rights. And, you know, it was bringing sort of more of the psychology of trauma informed methodology to document human rights violations. And communities were using those both as legal processes, but also as part of kind of a grassroots testimony therapy and that, that that was a methodology that was developed in, in Chile in the 70s. And that has kind of been passed around Latin America, and kind of weaves its way into community organizing processes. So that that was work that we were doing for a number of years. I love

the image of your of your child being passed around. What an amazing first year of life. It

really was it was so beautiful. And I remember meeting where we were all sitting in a big, big circle. And there was a big puddle in the middle because it was a it was a building that was kind of half constructed. But it was the only big space that was covered. And so people had built little boats, little paper boats for him and he was sitting at the peddle and he was playing with his boats and all of us were were talking about human rights. And I just thought, This is amazing. And so I think from that, the invitation to be part of the task force, I really had those voices you know so much in my head in my heart and when we kind of reached challenging points, it was it was those voices that helped us push through, I think, you know, and with real clarity about what what are we doing here, you know, we're we're really we're trying to challenge a way of using psychology that is incredibly harmful. And we're, we're really clear about the ethics and the and kind of rights perspective that should be informing all of us. So I felt like I was part of the human rights movement and bringing that movement to our profession, you know, and finding people that shared those values has been such a tremendous source of strength and resilience for me in my work is having people who I know share that same commitment and passion, you know. So I think that that, that report is sort of foundational for now, kind of teaching and professional practice work that I'm doing, both in internship, helping interns kind of understand those connections between psychology and human rights, and how they can learn to advocate how they can bring a human rights perspective to their therapy, how they can learn to identify critical issues that require research and advocacy, you know, like the work that Sita is describing, sort of perhaps developing that sensitivity to injustice, and bringing our tools as psychologists to, to both articulating the issues and coming up with recommendations. And then I think, you know, now in my sort of day to day, it's also supporting a team of practitioners to try to be responsive to culture and identity and context and provide services that are, you know, nuanced and tailored and person centered and attentive to, to the barriers and the injustices that people experience in their lives. So if that felt like a bit of a tangent. But I liked

what you're all saying in a way is you know, one of the things that, that, that it's what I'm hearing from you is that when you bring a human rights perspective to the work, it does force you to sort of make sure we're not falling back on convention, or the way things have been done, or some, you know, some older understandings or some uninformed potentially understandings, right, it kind of brings you into a more it pushes you to think, a bit more forward looking, how could we do this in a way that advances these these things, rather than always trying to be at the fixing it once there's been a violation, right? I think all of what I'm hearing from all of you is working toward, you know, not not having to respond to the violation of human rights, but actually advancing the human rights to seek to avoid those situations and in from these various different perspectives that you all that you all bring. And maybe I mean, I don't you don't all have to answer this, but something I was wondering about, and it might be interesting for our audiences, you know, once turning back to kind of your education and your, you know, once you sort of did get this, you know, you sort of saw this as your path and you realized you were going to be wanting to do work in this area. Did you need additional training? Or what, what kind of opportunities did you seek out to gain the expertise that you needed to do this work? So I just I don't know if someone has a thought on that.

If I may, I, you know, just as you were saying, this question of undoing. And kind of, I think there's a critical attention to psychology right now. And I feel this a lot when we're thinking about decolonization, thinking about sort of decolonizing psychology, how can we look at the history of psychology and these ideas and where they come from, and try to kind of pull them apart and repair them in some way. But I think what sometimes missed in that is the really deep tradition that already exists within psychology. It's maybe few and far between. But Latin American psychology is tremendous. And there's a lot of work that's translated in English. There's lots of folks that are working in the field that have brought a liberation theology perspective into psychology, liberation psychology, Martin-Baro is, of course, sort of a key figure in that movement. But I don't think we need to throw the whole baby out with the bathwater, you know, I think we need to find the roots of humanism in psychology and sort of find those people who have always been here, it's like understanding our lineage in a way. And there's a lot, there's so much richness there. And so I feel really comfortable confident saying that I'm a psychologist, I know where my roots are, I don't feel sort of like I'm in this colonized institution that's like rotten to the core. You know, I think that there are writers who've clarified the connections between power and political violence and human rights and psychology, there's a community of researchers who are working on understanding the political impact of torture. And, you know, and I think a lot of the writing about trauma has also situated political violence, as you know, the key mover there that it's this is not an intrapsychic problem. And so, you know, I think psychology, there's different trajectories. Right, but but we just need to find the road, and then we're on it. And then there's a whole community of people, both past and current, and, you know, in our students and the folks that are coming, you know, as well, that, that, that's our community, you know, so, you know, as you say, like, looking back at our education, I think it's kind of first finding that that road, and then, you know, once you're on it, then the education is there with mentorship with, with the lineage of folks that have been in this place before us. And then it's in the work, you know, it's it's sitting across from people and learning from their histories and stories, and how, how have you survived? You know, I think that that is for me, that I think was kind of my, my most formative education is understanding how they survive, what their sources of strength and resilience are, you know, the creative ways that people come together in, in community and resistance. That, you know, that was sort of my deepest education, and then we bring that to the field now.

I know I love that. I mean, I think one of the things you're saying that's really important is sometimes I think you can feel in this work, that you're, you're you're a bit alone in it, or you know, you haven't found your community perhaps, and I think what you all have talked about today is you found a community and you found people to do this work with and that really strengthened what you were, what you've done. Is there any other any other thoughts on training and education that was helpful beyond your, your, your graduate work, and your if not, I have another question.

Yeah, I think that's a great way to put it, that you have to find the communities and people and programs and trainings, and they might not be the most obvious. So I knew when I was applying to graduate school that I wanted to do clinical psychology, I had never heard of the field of community psychology until I started looking at programs and found an advisor and a program that was that captured both and the idea of community psychology is sort of born out of some of the limitations of an individual lens on mental health. So in the 60s, when there were a lot of movements to kind of protest and evolve our thinking, you know, nationwide or worldwide, one of those was, well, wait a minute, like to Kirby's point, maybe mental health isn't just something that a person has like a disease, but it's also something that is perpetrated by context, or, you know, that the environment can really play a role. So I found my way to the the lab at Berkeley of Rona Weinstein, who was trained as a community and clinical psychologist. And so I think that framing is how I've done all of my work. And then the other thing I'll add is that I, I always tell my students, I'm always applying for things they're applying for internships and postdocs, and I'm always applying for things too. I mean, I whatever opportunities I can get to be exposed to new communities of people who are thinking about things in ways that I'm not. I am thrilled to have a chance to do that. And, you know, that's how I ended up doing the fellowship with the World Health Organization on global mental health, I'm really enjoying consultancy work, which isn't really formal training. But in doing that work, I have a learning curve each time in being exposed and asked to play a role in a project that isn't sort of my bread and butter research. So I think, you know, both uncovering and pursuing opportunities that might not be the broadest paths. And then also just continuing to see opportunities for learning throughout one's careers are both really helpful.

I love that. Lifelong learning. That's. So that's a crucial, I mean, even for those, those of you who are doing this work, there's always more. But so I'm gonna shift gears tiny bit, because I think one of the things that our folks might be wondering about is, you know, when you do this work, and you're particularly when you're in working with refugees directly, or you're working, even with the UN and looking at these challenges, and, you know, you're you're, you're involved in challenging work, where people's human rights are being violated or have been violated and people are suffering, right, there's a real, so how do you handle that type of challenge of that work? Like how, you know, how do you knowing that you sort of immersing immersing yourself in in that kind of work? And then maybe also, how do you help educate your others or students or colleagues, you know, to be able to do this work? Now, who wants to tackle that? Gabe? How about you with some of your international work with psychologists elsewhere? I'm sort of curious about that. I could

say a few things. It's hard. That my work now is it 30,000 feet? Yeah, I Well, remember my research in Liberia speaking with people about horrific war experiences. I didn't have any kind of formal support system, I relied on friends and family. This is maybe slightly depressing from the specific question you asked. But one piece of advice I would definitely have for students who are planning this kind of work is to is to investigate local realities and traditions of what kind of support would actually be helpful on the ground. I remember when I did my research, I went through IRB at my host university by my home university in the US, and then my host university in Liberia. And, you know, I had to provide to old participants contact information for an organization offering mental health support, in case they were upset by participating in this research by the kind of conversations that we had. And it turned out, of course, that there was no tradition of formal mental health support, some no one made use of that, what I should have done was connected them to community religious institutions, which is where that kind of support would actually have happened. But I didn't do my sufficient background research and the people who I was working with to help plan the research didn't know and so I, I wish I could have done that differently. And for people who are planning that kind of research, please learn from my mistakes. Now, I'm a social psychologist. But working at places, at somewhere like APA, one of the things we're often asked to do is to provide or link to clinical support for people who are experiencing or working with those who experienced human rights abuses. For example, I served on the US steering committee for a wonderful organization called Scholars at Risk, which helps find placements at universities, for academics in war torn countries, or whose safety is otherwise at risk who have to flee their homes and go to a new country. One of the things that we were able to do was work with actually Diya, Diya Kallivayalil, from our task force, who provided trainings on secondary trauma to scholars at risk staff. And that is one of the things that I feel that psychology can absolutely contribute to those doing this kind of work. That's the expertise that many of us have, like, I don't personally, but you know, I have connections to those that deal and I think that brings real value to the table. That's,

that's incredible. Yeah, I love that work. We have some wonderful work going on like that at Palo Alto University. And it's just it's almost as important as the primary work. It's just if you can't, with the help givers don't you know, can't can't stay. Well, then we're, we're in double trouble. So did anyone else want to say I want to I want to move us to to, but I want to see if either of you wanted to say something about how you pass this along.

Maybe I'll just add that balance is so important. So whether you're frontlines, which like Gabe, I don't really consider myself frontlines. I'm supporting people who are. But balance is so important. And one story I can share is from last May a group of my doctoral students and I were at the Texas Mexico border with a colleague doing some data collection for an NIH funded study on asylum seekers health. And so this team of researchers from Mexico and Texas, gathered in this tent encampment of asylum seekers at the Mexico border waiting days, weeks months, to hear if they might have their case heard. And it was very hot and very intense and really heartbreaking to see, you know, children and families and people whose lives were just paused for so long living in really pretty harsh circumstances. And we heard their stories, a lot of trauma exposure in the countries that they had fled. And we collected this data and we came back and we at the end of the whole effort, the person, Francois Mercado, who had hosted us there, from the University of Texas had a party. And, you know, I thought, Okay, this will be some small talk and some appetizers. And at some point, everybody moved the tables out of the way this was in his home. And people were singing, karaoke, and dancing just became, and we were talking about how much we needed and appreciated, just to kind of let loose and have fun together. So I think, you know, that balance of just being able to also take care of the other sides of yourself is so important.

Such good advice, and Kirby, I wonder if you could add any advice that you might give to, to someone who might be interested in doing human rights work and kind of just either just starting out, or maybe one has heard this podcast and now wants to switch, switch careers? Any advice you might give? Yeah, I

mean, I really resonate with what you said, Sita, because I feel like I actually maybe I'm not the best at balance. I just recognize that for myself. For me, I think it's been just feeling really grateful to have work that that is useful, like knowing that I am making a contribution on the right side of things. And so maybe that sometimes pushes me a little hard. But it feels like it feels like good and important work. And so that keeps me really going. And then also, you know, feeling like I'm part of a community of human rights defenders, people who share that, that kind of spirit and that way of seeing, I think it's really helpful just to keep kind of grounded and feel like, though maybe the rest of the world kind of goes along as though these things aren't that important. Or maybe they're not real. It, it's helpful to feel really grounded in the knowledge of things that we know, to be true. And then I think, yeah, I think that I'm just I've also learned to soothe and regulate my nervous system. So you know, I think that that that was a practice that had to develop out of, you know, starting to notice when I was out of out of state, listening to trauma stories can be really dysregulating. And so being able to co regulate, and self regulate, I think is just a really, really important practice and technique and something that we need to learn.

Really important in those of us who support training, obviously. So really appreciate that. Well, I kind of want to, you know, we're sort of heading toward the end here. And I'd like to maybe do a sort of lightning round final. Final thoughts. But, you know, I think what we've heard today is just a great perspective on the work that that psychologists and others in the field of mental health can do. In in human rights. You know, you can work at the UN NGO level, you can work directly with refugee populations, you can do research on the ground, you can write summarize research for others who are writing policy. And I think what's really interesting is you can either, you know, work directly in a human rights role, or you can work in kind of any role and bring a human rights perspective, right. I think those are really both important and ways that I hope that our VIP task force that we keep referencing we will make available to our to our audience here. You know, I think what we tried to do there was to show people how a perspective on human rights could be brought into a number of the different areas of whether it's education or training or policy, as Gabe was saying, and, and others. So I think that it's this, this is exciting work if we can get more and more people to think at this level. And even though, sadly, as we've kind of discussed human rights exist, and apply to everyone, we have to continuously strive to ensure that they exist in practice, right, as we've certainly heard today, they don't always exist in practice, even if they exist on paper. So we have to keep doing this work to, to make them exist in practice. So if each of you, I'm just going to really do a brief lightning round here, if each of you could leave our audience, with your view on what is the value of bringing a human rights perspective, to our work and to our lives. Just putting you on the, on the lightning round spot here. Sita.

I think that piece that you described, of trying to close the gap, I've really been thinking about that, that on paper, whether at any level, so school level, neighborhood level, city level, country level, international level, all these different levels have probably some laws and policies and guidelines that are in keeping with human rights, values, not always but but then there's a big gap between what we see day to day. So in anything that we do, personally or professionally, we can always have a human rights lens, we can say does that, does that seem right? When I, you know, when I see down the street from my house in Oakland, so many unhoused people, that doesn't seem right, there's something wrong with the system that's linked to basic human rights. And so we can kind of have those antenna up in whatever spaces that we are in. And we can speak up when when those antennae pick up on things that are violations of human rights.

Well thank you for that, I think that's really important. Whether it's in your Yeah, your classroom, your home, your community, or your organization's wherever you are. Kirby, you have a thought on this. Yeah, I

think exactly. You know, as Sita mentioned, making the connection between the individual in their context, you know, is really important. And I think Judith Herman really said it very well, when she was describing trauma as, as part of our systems of oppression, you know, that, that these individual symptoms that people experience, because of interpersonal violence, because of, you know, being exposed to political violence being, you know, dragged into wars, those things have human rights implications. And as a clinician, you know, you can work with it, one person after the next and you can kind of keep just shoveling water, or you can start to build an analysis of like, what this world is and what it does to people. And for me, I think the, you know, you that would be a very bogged down vision of the world, if you keep seeing person after person, you know, as kind of the detritus of unjust systems without having some ability to think more broadly. And to feel like I'm part of that fight, you know, for justice. So maybe that's a selfish motivation to feel like that's the only way to keep myself floating, but, but it does generate a lot of energy and motivation, and that that kind of community is really, it really makes life worth living actually.

No, I appreciate that. Sita and I recently, we're talking about this reframing of the narrative, you know, some of the Ford Foundation and others groups are thinking about it, the generosity is focused on helping someone in need and justice is about solving the problems that create the need. Right. And I think, you know, the human rights framework, what you're saying is kind of brings us up to sort of look at that justice level. Gabe. Did you want to add any final thought on this? Oh,

yeah. I really appreciate how you just framed that Maureen. I think that was powerful. Um human rights. It provides a powerful philosophical framing for thinking about these things. It's one thing to say I want to help people because it's what I want to do but when you think it is this person's right, to not be tortured to have enough food to eat, to have access to resources to not be discriminated against whatever it is, if it's their right, then it's my responsibility to try to do something to to achieve that right. And then one final point I would make is I think human rights provides a common global language for us to talk to people around the world about these issues. When we started using human rights to talk about stuff, we've done at APA for years for decades, we kind of discovered that there are these other psych associations in different bits of the world, also doing this stuff. Because we hadn't used the same language, we hadn't necessarily been able to collaborate them collaborate with them in the same way. So just this common framing this common language lets us come together and when we're able to work together, you're able to have much more impact.

I could not imagine a better way to leave this amazing conversation. So I want to thank our fantastic panelists today Dr. Kirby Huminuik, Dr. Gabe Twose and Dr. Sita Patel. I'm so grateful for the work that you do, the time you've taken to talk about it with our audience. I'm Maureen O'Connor, president of Palo Alto University. Please check out the podcast website, talking mental health careers, for information and for resources relevant to human rights and for other fantastic episodes of the podcast. Thank you all so much.