Browsing by browse by HERDC Category Description "B1 Chapter in a Scholarly Book"

Intervention in issues related to climate change is becoming a defined area of practice for clinical psychologists, with general competencies and a potential for specialization. Our chapter is a collaboration among several psychologists engaged in climate and environment-related research and practice. We synthesize findings and practices from climate science, environmental psychology, environmental justice, psychotherapy, health psychology, and international perspectives. The field of clinical psychology is primed to respond to the climate crisis by creatively applying knowledge of mental health and functioning and the delivery of just, culturally appropriate, and empirically supported treatments and therapies.

People living with disability may face significant barriers in work, study, sport and joining in everyday activities. Community attitudes and experiences of discrimination can further impact on a person's wellbeing, with the resultant ableism leading to perceptions of the disabled as weak and needy, and experiences of rejection and oppression. Allied health professionals are constantly called on to recognise the multi-layered impact of ableism on those who seek their help, while simultaneously challenging their own perceptions and stereotypes. The chapter starts with definitions and statistics to contextualise the concept of disability within the contemporary Australian environment. The link between ableism and mental health is critically examined, and poignantly brought to life in the personal experiences of three individuals as they navigate living with invisible and visible disabilities. Experiential activities that encourage the learner to test and challenge societal stereotypes, their own perceptions and gain a greater understanding of environmental, social and institutional barriers faced by people living with disability conclude this chapter.

This chapter highlights the ongoing over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the criminal justice system and emphasises an urgent need for the development of appropriate responses to this problem. A key response to this issue is through the provision of culturally secure, relevant and effective rehabilitation programs for Aboriginal people within the criminal justice system. This chapter proposes an Aboriginal psychological approach to the development, implementation and delivery of culture-specific rehabilitation programs to reduce re-offending and Aboriginal people’s contact with the criminal justice system. It will outline how such an approach, which is grounded in Aboriginal Law and culture, can also accommodate standard therapeutic techniques and approaches based on the ‘what works’ literature and the key principles for effective intervention outlined in the Risk, Needs and Responsivity Model.

This chapter discusses the concept of 'access to justice' with regards to rural victims of crime and argues that it may be the most important issue for theory and research in rural criminology over the coming decades. It begins by clarifying definitions of rural, victimisation, crime, harm, access and justice. Through various examples, it illustrates what access to justice means. Working from the concept of deservingness, it identifies two fundamental types of access to justice within which various examples can be categorised. The first access to justice issue is the lack of credibility and importance of rural peoples and rural communities; that is, the idea that police and other criminal justice services are less likely to be made available. Examples can range from the lack of police response to rural people as witnesses and victims to the uneven distribution of resources in favour of urban residents and policy-making related to safety and security that often ignores the rural. The second type is too much credibility, but this time as possible offenders/criminals, resulting in discriminatory enforcement by law enforcement and other inequities in the criminal justice system, as illustrated by the collective experiences of Indigenous peoples in settler societies like Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States.