What happens when trauma meets systemic injustice?

This book delivers a powerful framework for clinicians, educators, and mental health professionals seeking to understand and intervene in the lives of clients whose struggles are rooted in trauma and compounded by racism, oppression, and other social “ISMS.” It challenges practitioners to move beyond surface-level diversity conversations and confront the deep psychosocial impact of power, privilege, and systemic inequities.

Grounded in anti-oppression principles, the text explores how racial history, white supremacy, gender bias, homophobia, and other social toxins shape identity and mental health. It equips readers with strategies to apply an anti-oppressive lens in clinical practice-evaluating trauma through the prism of systemic socio-cultural factors. Unlike traditional multicultural counseling resources, this book integrates psychodynamic thinking with sociocultural theory, preparing professionals to address stigma, bias, and race-based dehumanization that manifest as anxiety, mistrust, and psychic numbing.

Through a socio-political and cultural analysis, readers gain insight into how microaggressions, police harassment, and daily racialized stressors culminate in profound psychological symptoms. Practical tools and case-based applications help clinicians engage, assess, and intervene effectively with individuals and families navigating these realities.

Designed for students and practitioners in social work, counseling, marriage and family therapy, and allied mental health fields, this book offers more than theory-it provides actionable strategies to foster resilience and healing in a world marked by inequity.

Samuel R. Aymer, PhD, is associate professor at the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College. For over twenty-five years, Dr. Aymer worked as a therapist in the field of intimate partner abuse with abused women and abusive men, as a group facilitator for batterers' treatment programs, and as a director of training for programs designed to serve victims and abusers of intimate partner abuse and community violence. He also supervised counselors and therapists who served abused women, children, and abusive men. Currently, his research and scholarship center on the multiple ways in which IPV affects the psychosocial needs of children and adults, as well as the application of psychodynamic theories in clinical work with diverse client populations.
Dr. Aymer is on the faculty at Hunter College School of Social Work where he teaches the following courses: Clinical Practice with Individuals, Families and Groups and Social Work Practice with Victims of Violence. Prior to teaching these courses, he taught Soc