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Critical social justice ideology aids, abets poorer mental health, therapists argue
A new scholarly article describes the mechanisms of how leftist ideology has likely led to a worsening of mental health counseling and classroom curriculum on the subject.
Arnold Cantú and Nathan Gallo are the two social work professionals who authored the article in the latest special Issue of Current Opinion in Psychology.
In it, they attempt to provide “an alternative explanation for potential causes behind the rise in psychiatric diagnoses and poorer mental health outcomes for people who identify as liberal or left-leaning in the United States.”
“Research regularly suggests that left-leaning people have poorer mental health than conservatives,” the two said in an emailed statement to The College Fix, adding it’s a “notable finding that has become increasingly applicable to the younger generation.”
“This article argues that woke ideology—what we refer to as critical social justice ideology—has warped a well-established psychotherapy approach often used to treat various kinds of psychological distress, known as cognitive-behavioral therapy,” they added.
“This ideology’s main tenets are full of ‘cognitive distortions,’ which are faulty, automatic patterns of thinking that CBT attempts to treat. Instead, woke ideology intentionally promotes these patterns, resulting in poorer mental health for clients, families, and therapists who buy into it.”
Their thesis, which builds off the work of scholars Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff, is that critical social justice ideology has been effectively promoting “reverse cognitive-behavioral therapy,” an inversion of a well-known, well-established, and effective psychotherapy modality.
The paper argues that various aspects of critical social justice ideology, born out of the political Left, are prime motivators for numerous cognitive distortions, such as dichotomous thinking, emotional reasoning, overgeneralization, tunnel vision, and both magnification and minimization.
It defines critical social justice ideology as “the obsession ‘with power, language, knowledge, and the relationship between them,” which creates a worldview aiming to make everything a zero-sum political struggle around identity markers such as race, sex, gender, and others.
These thought processes propagate beliefs that support a “grievance mentality” and “victimhood culture,” stemming from a socio-political understanding which motivates an “oppressor vs oppressed” worldview and demands things like diversity, equity, and inclusion through self-righteous justifications and an all-or-nothing mindset, according to the scholars.
In an email to The College Fix, Cantú said culture and society has changed — especially since 2020 — and as a practicing psychotherapist for over a decade, he has been interested in how left-leaning individuals are likely to struggle more emotionally, psychologically, or behaviorally compared to their conservative counterparts.
He said Left-leaning people’s views influence their mental well-being and don’t develop in a vacuum.
“Therefore, I think that a missing piece to the puzzle has been what kind of belief system might they more likely be adopting—wholesale or parts of—compared to their conservative counterparts,” he said.
The paper explains that core social justice ideology ideas “can lead to faulty thinking and reasoning not necessarily grounded in reality,” impeding a client’s ability to change and improve their lives by masking their thoughts as a pre-set moral conclusion that is the fault of society.
Modern academia has been one of the stalwart advocates for such an ideology, with major institutions promoting DEI and left-wing ideology, they said.
The two authors have experienced critical social justice principles in action in their own education. Cantú himself withdrew from a doctoral program after witnessing what he describes as cult-like behavior and being compelled to view his research through a CSJ lens.
Gallo said he was fairly familiar with key critical social justice readings from his experience in grad school, inspiring him to write an essay describing the program’s ideological slant.
He told The College Fix that under 2022 accreditation requirements from the Council on Social Work Education, an accreditation group currently being criticized by Do No Harm for infusing DEI into their widely used standards, critical social justice has become the heart of bachelor- and master’s-level social work training for new professionals.
This and other attempts to push education to the Left have already formed echo chambers across the country, he said.
“To speak frankly, the consequences of ideological capture for those seeking therapy will be disastrous,” Gallo said. “What concerns me most is realizing the degree to which new social workers and therapists adopt CSJ wholesale due to their training, writing off alternative practice perspectives and remaining unaware of political diversity.”
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