Exploring factors impacting social justice advocacy attitudes among play therapists

Overall, the United States’ population is becoming more diverse, and children in minority groups have many disadvantages due to circumstances beyond their control. They experience more poverty (US Census Bureau, 2017), unequal educational opportunities (US Census Bureau, 2019), discriminatory practices (Pascoe & Smart Richman, 2009), trauma (Sacks & Murphey, 2018), mental health diagnoses, and inadequate mental health services. Mental health professionals who work with children, specifically play therapists, are called to be more responsive to the increase in diversity of the growing population of children. To support diverse children and offer responsive mental health services, researchers need to explore factors that may influence play therapists’ social justice advocacy attitudes. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine how adverse childhood experiences, attitudes related to trauma-informed care, and cultural humility were related to social justice advocacy attitudes among play therapists. A standard multiple regression was utilized to examine how the predictor variables were related to play therapists’ (N=409) social justice advocacy attitudes. Results indicated that attitudes related to trauma-informed care and cultural humility contributed significantly to the prediction of social justice advocacy attitudes, accounting for 11% of the variance. Implications, limitations, and recommendations for future research are discussed.