A Return to “The Clinic” for Community Psychology: Lessons from a Clinical Ethnography in Urban American Indian Behavioral Health

Community psychology (CP) abandoned the clinic and disengaged from movements for community mental health (CMH) to escape clinical convention and pursue growing aspirations as an independent field of context‐oriented, community‐engaged, and values‐driven research and action. In doing so, however, CP positioned itself on the sidelines of influential contemporary movements that promote potentially harmful, reductionist biomedical narratives in mental health. We advocate for a return to the clinic—the seat of institutional power in mental health—using critical clinic‐based inquiry to open sites for clinical‐community dialogue that can instigate transformative change locally and nationally. To inform such works within the collaborative and emancipatory traditions of CP, we detail a recently completed clinical ethnography and offer “lessons learned” regarding challenges likely to re‐emerge in similar efforts. Conducted with an urban American Indian community behavioral health clinic, this ethnography examined how culture and culture concepts (e.g., cultural competence) shaped clinical practice with socio‐political implications for American Indian peoples and the pursuit of transformative change in CMH. Lessons learned identify exceptional clinicians versed in ecological thinking and contextualist discourses of human suffering as ideal partners for this work; encourage intense contextualization and constraining critique to areas of mutual interest; and support relational approaches to clinic collaborations.