Abstract
This chapter provides a narrative of the early training experiences that shaped my career as well as an accounting of how my thinking about research and clinical practice has evolved over the years. I share examples from my research focused on family and ecological influences on mental health, concentrating in particular on research with families who have immigrant and refugee backgrounds and the interventions we have developed based on this research. I attempt to illustrate how my research has grown to become increasingly community-engaged, increasingly focused on building strengths in addition to understanding challenges, and increasingly framed within a social justice lens. I also discuss my clinical perspective on working with children and adolescents, which is grounded in family systems and developmental psychopathology models. My perspectives on assessment and intervention include the importance of self-reflection, striving for cultural safety and humility, identifying the implicit assumptions we make about mental health, and bringing an understanding of structural inequities into case conceptualizations and treatment plans. These developments in my thinking mirror changes in the field of clinical psychology more broadly. Finally, I share some future directions and lessons learned over the years that transcend specific research or clinical activities.
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Costigan, C.L. (2022). Factors Within Families and Their Ecological Contexts That Shape Their Health and Well-Being: A Legacy Chapter. In: Andrews, J.J., Shaw, S.R., Domene, J.F., McMorris, C. (eds) Mental Health Assessment, Prevention, and Intervention. The Springer Series on Human Exceptionality. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97208-0_8
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