Wealth & Mental Health
“The practice of psychotherapy is an art grounded in science, delivered relationally. Maximizing outcomes for patients of wealth requires including wealth as a salient identity deserving of cultural humility in the provision of clinical services.”
~ Paul Hokemeyer, J.D., Ph.D., Global Leaders in Healthcare, Harvard Medical School ’23
The What.
In the practice of psychotherapy, an identity of wealth is significant.
It informs how the client views themselves, how they are viewed by others, and how they are seen in the contemporary zeitgeist.
The Why.
Patients of wealth must be treated by clinicians who understand their unique cultural markers. Research shows these markers include isolation, suspicion of outsiders, and hyperagency.
Data further show that successful treatment outcomes require a therapeutic alliance between the treating professional and the patient in which the patient feels a safe emotional bond with the care provider.
The How.
Through therapeutic alliances grounded in cultural humility, clinicians can effectively deliver reparative care to patients of wealth who live with culturally salient identities.
These alliances require the patient to experience the clinician as empathic, nonjudgmental, and reliable enough to feel safe disclosing vulnerable truths about themselves and their lives.
For patients of wealth, this threshold is higher to meet due to a host of negative and hostile perceptions of people of wealth.
In this regard, patients must be seen as unique individuals in the fullness of their intersecting identities rather than defined solely by their identity as a person of wealth.