ALEXANDRIA, VA - March 14, 2012 - Counselors for Social Justice (CSJ), a division of the American Counseling Association (ACA), today announced that Dr. Caitlin Ryan will receive its 2012 Mary Smith Arnold Anti-Oppression Award. The award will honor Dr. Ryan's work as Director of the Family Acceptance Project (FAP), a community research, intervention, education and policy initiative that studies the impact of family acceptance and rejection on the health, mental health and well-being of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth and develops resources and approaches to decrease risk and promote well-being for LGBT youth in the context of their families. FAP is affiliated with SF State University.
The Anti-Oppression Award is given each year to professional counselors and counselor educators who have a demonstrated commitment to challenging oppression in their schools and communities. Dr. Ryan received this award for her groundbreaking research and family intervention work that links family acceptance and rejection of LGBT youth with health-related risk and wellness, including depression, suicide, and HIV, as well as self-esteem, life-satisfaction and well-being.
Based on this research, Dr. Ryan has developed multi-lingual educational and family intervention materials to help ethnically and religiously diverse families support their LGBT children for use by families and a wide range of health, mental health, school-based and family practice providers. Not only is Dr. Ryan with her team the first to publish studies that show the relationship between family accepting and rejecting behaviors during adolescence with suicidality, sexual health risks, substance use and well-being in young adulthood, but she is also the first to develop a family-affirming model for interventions across systems of care that engages diverse family members as potential sources of support rather than adversaries. This work is changing the paradigm for working with LGBT youth by providers and youth service organizations across the country.
Said Stuart Chen-Hayes, one of the founders of CSJ, currently Associate Professor & Program Coordinator, Counselor Education/School Counseling at Lehman College of the City University of New York: "I nominated Dr. Ryan for the Counselors for Social Justice Mary Smith Arnold Anti-Oppression award because I can think of no other researcher / clinician who does such powerful work at the intersection of multiple oppressions: heterosexism, sexism, racism, religious differences, and across so many diverse populations. From her early work to inform quality health care and counseling for LGBT youth to her decade-long work with the Family Acceptance Project, Dr. Ryan exemplifies the spirit of Dr. Mary Smith Arnold. As a former student of Dr. Arnold's myself, her message has informed my work and the work of so many others: we all need to be allies to challenge multiple oppressions. Dr. Ryan's work is a shining example of the power of rigorous research and evidence-based interventions to challenge oppression in its many forms and complexities."
About the Family Acceptance Project
The Family Acceptance Project is a community research, intervention, education and policy initiative that is designed to: 1) improve the health, mental health, and well-being of LGBT children and adolescents; 2) strengthen and help ethnically and religiously diverse families support their LGBT children; 3) help LGBT youth stay in their homes to prevent homelessness and the need for custodial care in the foster care and juvenile justice systems; 4) inform public policy and family policy; and 5) develop a new evidence-based, family model of wellness, prevention, and care to promote well-being and decrease risk for LGBT youth. For more information, please visit familyproject.sfsu.edu .
About Counselors for Social Justice
The mission of Counselors for Social Justice is to work to promote social justice in our society through confronting oppressive systems of power and privilege that affect professional counselors and our clients and to assist in positive change in our society through the professional development of counselors.
Social justice counseling represents a multifaceted approach to counseling in which practitioners strive to simultaneously promote human development and the common good through addressing challenges related to both individual and distributive justice. Social justice counseling includes empowering the individual as well as active confrontation of injustice and inequality in society as they impact both clients and those in their systemic contexts. In doing so, social justice counselors direct attention to promoting four critical principles that guide their work; equity, access, participation, and harmony. This work is done with a focus on the cultural, contextual, and individual needs of those served.
For more information, see http://www.counselorsforsocialjustice.com/
About the Mary Smith Arnold Anti-Oppression Award
Dr. Mary Smith Arnold (1946-2003) was a cherished member of the counseling and human development professions and a founder of Counselors for Social Justice. She was active in civil rights struggles throughout her all-too-short life, and a Counselor Educator on the faculties of Governors State and Kent State Universities specializing in Community and Couple, Marital, and Family Counseling. She was the co-creator of the Unlearning Oppression workshops, taught to thousands of students and colleagues around the world. An ally to all oppressed peoples, Dr. Arnold's spirit of expecting equity and justice for all peoples was evident in her leadership roles in ACA as a CSJ Governing Council representative and in her work as co-chair of ACA's Public Policy and Legislation Committee.
