Despite practice guidelines and ethical standards that provide imperatives for clinicians to utilize multicultural assessment (MCA), little is known about how the average psychologist actually conducts MCA. The current mixed-method study was designed to investigate clinicians' training and use of MCA practice strategies. Participants were 239 (107 male, 131 female, 1 other gender) licensed psychologists residing in the United States and Canada who were recruited from the American Psychological Association practice directory to complete an online survey. Quantitative items on the survey included questions about the number and utility of MCA-related graduate courses and supervision experiences, and strategies and frameworks used when conducting MCA. Open-ended questions provided expansion about factors that were helpful and not helpful in graduate training experiences. Findings suggested that only 75% of participants had taken a course that included MCA-related content, but almost all of those participants found the material they learned to be helpful. Graduate courses with MCA-related content were perceived as more helpful than graduate supervision, and the most helpful aspects of courses and supervision were related to increasing knowledge and awareness about MCA. Almost 40% of the sample reported using no theory or framework for conducting MCA, and participants differed in their use of MCA strategies. Findings are discussed in relation to the training and continuing education of clinicians and future directions for research.
Race is perhaps one of the most difficult topics to discuss in contemporary society. Although race influences so many aspects of everyday life, we are often hesitant and sometimes afraid to broach, openly discuss or acknowledge the impact of racial issues in our daily lives. As such, race and how it affects society holds power over people in complex and sometimes insidious ways.Counselors feel this same tension. Some counselors believe that openly including discussions of racial concerns is vital to the counseling and therapy process (e.g., Burkard & Knox, 2004;Day-Vines et al., 2007). Others, however, have argued that such discussions are unnecessary (e.g., Abramowitz & Murray, 1983;Garb, 1997) and perhaps even a distraction from important clinical issues (e.g., Garb, 1997). The latter perspectives are consistent with color-blind racial ideology (CBRI), which has emerged as a critical variable in psychology and counseling (Neville, Awad, Brooks, Flores, & Bluemel, 2013). CBRI is the denial of racial differences and racism by emphasizing that everyone is the
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