Social determinants of mental health: Informing counseling practice and professional identity

Abstract

The counseling field, with its grounding in wellness, social justice, and development, is well positioned to adopt a social determinants of mental health framework and lead initiatives to further integrate this type of framework into the larger mental health field. The purpose of this article is to bring together and apply two existing models, the social determinants of mental health and the social determinants of mental disorders, to the field of professional counseling. The authors argue that by adopting this framework, professional counselors will be better positioned to identify and address social determinants of mental health both proximal and distal to their clients and use this to inform direct clinical practice, the design and evaluation of counselor training programs, the development of community-based intervention programs, counseling research, as well as policy initiatives ranging from the organizational to public policy levels.