Psychology and the landscapes of violence: Beyond the individual towards structural accountability

La psicología y los escenarios de la violencia: Responsabilidad estructural más allá de lo individual

Sarah Frances Gordon sarah.gordon@ibero.mx

Universidad Iberoamericana Mexico City, México

Esta obra está bajo una Licencia Creative Commons Atribución 4.0 Internacional.

The field of psychology often centres on individual suffering. However, human experiences unfold within a social context. In Mexico, these experiences are frequently shaped—if not determined—by broader systems of violence and exclusion. Structural and symbolic violence are not just theoretical constructs; they manifest in bodies, minds, and everyday life. This editorial reflects on how the articles in this issue, addressing suicide, beauty norms in the workplace and forced disappearance, reveal the need for psychology to engage with systems of power.

Two forms of violence relevant to this paper are structural and symbolic violence, which cause systemic harm. Johan Galtung (1969, 1971, 1990) conceptualised structural violence as harm embedded within political, economic, and social systems that restrict individuals’ opportunities. He emphasised that inequalities are ingrained in established social relationships, whereby privileged groups control the distribution of resources. Structural violence, therefore, illustrates how social injustice becomes normalised and often invisible within societal practices and institutions (Cocks, 2012).

Symbolic violence refers to a subtle yet pervasive form of domination, sustained through cultural norms, aesthetic standards, and legitimised inequalities. It often operates through internalising these norms by those who benefit from and those subjected to them. Bourdieu (1991) famously asserted that “symbolic power is that invisible power which can be exercised only with the complicity of those who do not want to know that they are subject to it or even that they themselves exercise it” (p. 164)^[2].

This issue of the journal presents five articles that explore themes including suicide, beauty standards imposed on women in professional and everyday contexts and forced disappearances in Mexico. At first glance, these topics may seem unrelated; however, a closer look reveals that each engages with a distinct form of violence rooted in broader systems of inequality.

Although suicide is often viewed as a personal tragedy, it can also be understood as a response to structural conditions such as poverty, gender inequality, social exclusion, and the chronic absence of accessible, culturally appropriate mental health care. Workplace beauty standards constitute a form of symbolic violence, whereby racialised, gendered, and classed bodies are subjected to aesthetic norms that reward conformity and punish difference. Forced disappearances, a reality in Mexico, represent one of the most extreme manifestations of structural violence, perpetrated by criminal and state actors, sustained by impunity, and endured by families whose search for truth is typically met with institutional corruption, neglect and silence. In each case, individual suffering reinforces systemic harm.

Dominant approaches in mainstream psychology are predominantly individualistic, particularly those centred on “coping” and “resilience”. These dominant approaches continue to shape how the discipline is taught and practised in Mexico. However, this individualistic lens often fails to address the structural conditions that produce suffering, including poverty, exclusion, and systemic violence. Human experience does not occur in a vacuum; it is shaped by context, history, and power.

There is an urgent need to embrace critical and liberatory psychological perspectives (Martín-Baró, 1994, 2006; Montero, 2007; Montero & Sonn, 2009) that attend not only to individual symptoms but also to collective struggles and community agency. Psychology must engage with the social determinants of mental health, the enduring effects of gendered and racialised violence, and the cultural logics that determine who is valuable and who is seen as disposable. The construction of human life as “disposable” in Mexico is attributed to the normalisation of violence in the country, which can also be observed in the symbolic and structural violence present. By examining context and society critically, this perspective also enables us to access a new range of community resources that we as psychologists can utilise when we work with clients.

Achieving change requires open dialogue with disciplines such as sociology and political science, and a genuine commitment to engaging with community activism and grassroots movements. Only then can psychology move from the clinic to the collective.

All three topics explored in this issue—suicide, beauty standards imposed on women and forced disappearances in Mexico—share a common thread: the invisibility of emotional pain, of embodied aesthetic pressures, and of those who have been made to disappear and their families. The absence of recognition—of being seen, named, or remembered—carries profound psychological consequences. In this way, memory and psychology are deeply intertwined.

Suicide is often pathologised as an individual failure, rather than understood as a collective symptom of structural violence and social suffering. Beauty standards are constructed as a form of symbolic violence, erasing individuality and self-expression—particularly for racialised and gendered bodies—under the guise of “professionalism”. The families of the disappeared engage in acts of radical visibility, asserting memory and resistance against silence and denial.

These acts of radical visibility are evident in the countless protests against forced disappearances. In Mexico, criminal organisations are known to collude with local authorities to enforce territorial control through disappearances (CIVICUS, 2025). Given the state’s persistent failure to investigate these crimes, the burden of searching falls to the families themselves. In 2024, the Instituto Mexicano de Derechos Humanos y Democracia (IMDHD, 2024) reported 114,069 cases of forced disappearance in Mexico.

According to the World Bank's World Development Indicators, the suicide mortality rate in Mexico was estimated at 7.1 per 100,000 population in 2021 (World Bank Group, 2021). The most at-risk group in Mexico comprises young people aged 18 to 29 (Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social [IMSS], 2022).

In Mexico, beauty standards are shaped by Eurocentric and Western ideals, and women face intense social pressure to conform to these rigid norms (Krozer & Gómez, 2023). Women are expected to embody whiteness and thinness to align with the dominant aesthetic values (Krozer & Gómez, 2023).

As psychologists, we must examine the internal and structural conditions underlying suffering. Understanding experience requires attending not only to psychological processes but also to the systems that render suffering invisible.

As Ignacio Martín-Baró (1994, 2006) argued, psychology must move beyond its traditional confines to address the pervasive social and structural conditions that produce human suffering. His critique emerged from a profound dissatisfaction with mainstream psychology’s tendency to operate under a guise of value neutrality, to focus narrowly on the individual, and to disregard broader social context. Martín-Baró (1994, 2006) contended that this conventional approach perpetuates societal oppression by individualising problems that are inherently systemic and sociopolitical.

A shift in perspective is urgently needed—away from an exclusive focus on intrapsychic processes and towards recognising that individuals are embedded within social contexts. Human behaviour and mental health are inextricably linked to historical, sociopolitical, and economic realities. Therefore, preventing suffering and fostering liberation requires psychology to confront and challenge the oppressive structures that sustain such suffering (Martín-Baró, 1994, 2006).

We call for research that centres marginalised voices and for clinical practices that interrogate, rather than adapt to, dominant norms. Journal editors must prioritise complex and politicised themes in their publications. Moreover, psychology must abandon the illusion of neutrality because silence or claimed neutrality in the face of systemic violence constitutes complicity.

Psychology must speak not only for the individual but also for the social conditions in which they live. We invite readers to engage critically with the contributions in this issue to broaden their understanding of symbolic and structural violence and its implications for mental health. In the face of pain, silence, and discomfort, psychology must confront the sociopolitical structures that give rise to suffering.

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