What role can (and should) clinical science play in promoting mental health care equity?

Health inequities have persisted in scientific examination and subsequent efforts related to prevention, detection, and, particularly, treatment of mental health disorders and symptoms over most of the history of our field. In the past decade, the tide has been slowly turning to make the promotion of mental health care equity across all segments of the population more mainstream, and the momentum to do so has further accelerated in the past 5 years. This review provides a brief summary of what we currently know about mental health care inequities (across a range of identity markers), and a brief discussion about what the role of social justice and advocacy has been and can continue to be in the field of clinical science. Following this, several specific areas of scholarship are reviewed in terms of their contributions to promoting mental health care equity, namely: community-based research and community-driven mental health treatment adaptations, task-shifting efforts in domestic and global settings, utilization of technology innovations to promote such work and increase access, and policy efforts stemming from such work. The review ends off with a commentary on lessons learned and potential future directions for the field. Taken together, it is hoped that it will be clearer for clinical science scholars and trainees to grasp what role we can and should have as clinical psychologists in promoting mental health care equity in the communities we serve and in society at large. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).