Methodology and Literature Review
Methodology
The focus of my project centered around my involvement with the Indigo Peer Counseling group. Indigo is the newest undergraduate peer counseling groups at Harvard. It started about two years ago, in 2016, when a senior student of color took initiative to address the need for a mental health service which focused on issues of race, class, first generation and immigration status. This occurred in the midst of the all the racial tension and social movements both on and off campus. The student was Henri Garrison. They noticed that there was much support for the movements, but not for the mental health of the students facing these issue. Yes, there existed other peer counseling groups, but their focuses ranged from eating concerns to sexuality--none that specifically handled these other identities.
The college seemingly welcomed the new group, but this did not translate into the support Indigo needed. Indigo’s complicated story is told in a separate section of this project. It goes into more depth about the various obstacles Indigo has faced and will potentially face in the future. The biggest challenge being the lack of foundational knowledge for the group. At the start of each semester, it felt like we were building everything from scratch. All the initial tools were lost with Garrison’s graduation. The other peer counseling groups were amazingly supportive and shared their documents, but it still didn’t feel completely right because it wasn’t formed by our group for our group. Therefore, I thought it was necessary to formulate a coherent narrative of Indigo’s past.
This project was an opportunity to dig into the past and understand why Indigo was made and then begin to create a plan for its future. I devoted time into inspecting my personal story with Indigo, and then piecing together Indigo’s past through Harvard Crimson articles. Also, looking into other staffer’s stories and how they intertwined and added to Indigo’s narrative. I did this by conducting interviews with the two other seniors (some of the longest serving members). I attempted to reach out to the founder, Garrison, but they never responded. When it came to interviews with the supervisors scheduling was complicated. I also did new research into peer counseling groups on other campuses. Many of them did not contact me in time for an interview, did not feel comfortable being interviewed or just never responded. However, their websites did provide insight into their missions and how they functioned. Using this, I was able to compare Indigo to their groups and use it to formulate some of the action items for the future of Indigo.
Literature Review
Indigo is special. Currently, my research showed that there does not exist a college organization that parallels it. Therefore, it was difficult to do research or find similar organizations for comparison. My literature review focused on the separate parts that were combined in order to create Indigo. The three sources I choose to use first established the importance of race in mental health, then why intersectionality matters when it comes to mental health, and finally, the role that peer counseling groups play on college campuses.
Chang & Downey’s Handbook of Race and Development of Mental Health, was of course a large body of text in which I focused on “A History of Cross-Cultural Clinical Psychology, and Its Importance to Mental Health Today.” In this section, it historically justifies the stigma and distrust that many minority communities have towards counseling services. Psychology had been used to justify many discriminatory behaviors and mentalities, “this kind of thinking about race was not problematic for most White Americans at this time. It simply reflected what seemed to be the order of nature. It justified this era as one dominated by a deficit or inferiority model of difference.”2
The rest of the handbook discusses intersection of race and mental health in different minority communities from Native American to Latinx. Much of the research cited in the handbook is relatively new, especially compared to the long history of psychology. Therefore, it makes sense why there doesn’t exist more groups like Indigo. However, once a group like Indigo is created it must have certain ideologies in mind.
One framework that is kept in mind is intersectionality. This is the idea that people have multiple identities and they intersect and add layers to their lives. Sometimes, some identities are more salient than others. Some identities add to your privilege while others can detract. Budge et al. studies the trans community and how their intersectional identities (such as race and SES) affect their mental health.
“As a practitioner, I (S. L. B.) have heard trans clients report frustrations with therapists solely focusing on their trans identity and not on other issues that were at the forefront of their presenting concerns. Although it may be important to explore trans identity, we caution therapists against overemphasizing gender, when SES or race and/or ethnicity (for example) may be intertwined with the presenting issue.”1
As the quote demonstrates, sometimes certain identities are ignored because others--the practitioners--do not understand this intersectional framework because they themselves haven’t had similar experiences. This highlights an important ideology behind Indigo and the way it structures itself as a peer counseling group.
It is important to acknowledge the importance of peer counseling groups on college campuses both for those who use its services and to those who choose to become peer counselors.
“The peer counselor assists other students by clarifying thoughts and feelings, be exploring options, or providing needed information… Further, there is evidence that preparation for the role and reflection on experience as a peer counselor can be a powerful and enabling factor in individual and group development; through providing service to others, students exercise altruism and learn interdependence in the process of individuation.”3
Therefore, I wanted to end this literature review discussing how much of an impact Indigo has had on certain people. We of course always wanted more business, but for many of the counselors they were happy to just have this space. They knew there was a group of peers who they could talk to about their experience and know someone else in the room understood what they were going through. They were also taught skills and resources that many used for spaces outside of Indigo.
Indigo is special because it takes all these different ideas and mixes them beautifully together to create a space that has never existed before. A place that recognizes that these are real issues and are important to our mental health.
Works Cited:
Budge, S., Thai, J., Tebbe, E., & Howard, K. (2016). The Intersection of Race, Sexual Orientation, Socioeconomic Status, Trans Identity, and Mental Health Outcomes ψ. The Counseling Psychologist, 44(7), 1025-1049.
Chang, Edward C. ; Downey, Christina A. (2012). Handbook of Race and Development in Mental Health. New York, NY: Springer New York.
D'Andrea, V. (1987). Peer Counseling in Colleges and Universities:. Journal of College Student Psychotherapy, 1(3), 39-55.
