Culture and Diversity

“The presenter was excellent. Her expertise was evident and she used great illustrative examples. It was a comfortable learning experience.”-Vicki W., Social Worker, Maryland

As people are living longer worldwide, clinicians will increasingly need the skills and knowledge to work with older adults. Professional guidelines indicate that specific competencies are needed to work effectively with older clients, yet many clinicians surveyed say they have not had sufficient training and experience to work with this client population.  This webinar is designed to familiarize participants with information and useful strategies from the scientific literature and clinical experience to allow you to work competently and successfully with older adults. The webinar will cover normal aging as well as health and cognitive concerns in older adults. Adjustments to assessment and intervention strategies to meet the needs of older adults will be discussed. Awareness of ageism and cultural factors will also be covered.

Psychological functioning is always embedded within a cultural context.  Maladaptive patterns that bring clients to psychotherapy are often learned in response to sociocultural macrosystems.  In order to promote a unified approach to treatment, this seminar will highlight how cultural contexts shape cognition, emotion, and behavior.  When clients move into a new culture or subculture, they engage in a process of adaptation that can be more or less successful.  Cultural adaptation will be described as a possible focus in psychotherapy.

This seminar will teach both cultural conceptualization and intervention methods.  Cultural conceptualization will be described as way to understand clients using the following concepts: (1) Ecological systems, (2) Social location, privilege, and oppression, (3) Multiple identities, (4) Identity development, and (5) Acculturation.

Foundational cultural skills will be described and demonstrated with role-play videos.  These skills will address three general processes: (1) Exploration and functional analysis of cultural expereinces, (2) Guided discovery to uncover more adaptive functioning, and (3) Enacting adaptation outside of psychotherapy. 

At a more advanced level, this seminar will introduce the concepts of cultural humility and decolonization.  Participants will be encouraged to consider how these ideas can inform the practice of psychotherapy with diverse clients.

This seminar is part of Level Two of Training in Unified Psychotherapy (TUP), focusing on working contextually with external contexts and internal influences.  An essential part of a unified approach to treatment is understanding the impact of cultural contexts on dysfunctional thoughts, feelings, and actions and fostering more adaptive responses.

Working with a diverse ethnic population requires clinicians who can appreciate unique differences in culture as well as psychopathology arising from experiences of stigma and oppression. Further, it is imperative that individuals from underrepresented groups be equitably represented in mental care settings and research studies. Equitable representation is needed to ensure that research findings are generalizable to all populations.  Cultural, economic, and logistic barriers can deter people from disadvantaged racial and ethnic groups from seeking treatment or participating in mental health research, and can also deter clinicians from including them. This presentation describes steps mental health clinicians can take to increase inclusion of people in minoritized groups. Important strategies include formal training in cultural differences, development of multi-cultural awareness, diversification of treatment teams, community outreach, professional networking, targeted advertising, a comfortable environment, and ongoing review of efforts. Also included is an overview of research abuses against vulnerable populations which has eroded trust between communities of color and the medical establishment.  Dr. Williams will speak to these issues based on the research literature, her work starting mental health clinics throughout the US, and her experience as a principal investigator in studies recruiting hard-to-reach racialized participants for mental health studies. This course is for anyone seeking to recruit more diverse individuals, implement inclusive research studies, attend to cultural considerations in the process of interventions, and/or incorporate critical ethical principles into clinical procedures.

This course will satisfy your ethics requirement.

Religion and spirituality are important dimensions of most individuals’ lives. Yet, many mental health clinicians do not receive education and training focused on how to address these issues, when appropriate, with their clients. This webinar provides information on the roles of spirituality and religion in many clients’ lives, how to address our own biases about them and how our own beliefs may impact how we view and address them, how to appropriately assess each client’s treatment needs to include religious and spiritual issues and concerns, and how to tap into clients’ beliefs, practices, and faith communities as sources of strength that may enhance the professional services we provide. Ethics issues, challenges, and dilemmas are addressed, and an ethical decision-making model is shared and clinical examples are provided and discussed to illustrate its application. Recommendations for ethical and clinically effective practice are provided. 

This course will satisfy your cultural diversity requirement.

In this webinar, Dr. Williams will distinguish between color blind and multicultural approaches.  She will talk about racial identity in blacks and whites and talk about the impact of cultural stereotypes.  She will identify the impact of discrimination and racism on mental health.  This webinar will also focus on practical skills in working with African American clients, looking at cultural mistrust, diagnostic issues, and Afrocentric values.  Finally, Dr. Williams will highlight the literature on race and IQ and psychopathology assessment.  She will help participants in defining culturally sensitive therapy.

“Dr. Gibson is very knowledgeable and experienced on this topic. She also has a very pleasant, engaging method of teaching. Excellent session!”-Jeffrey T., Social Worker, New York

During a time of unprecedented crisis in the face of a global pandemic, many individuals across the globe are unfortunately impacted by another stressor detrimental to their health: racial trauma. Those who experience racial trauma have feelings of distress that lead them to seek counseling for symptom relief. Psychotherapists are charged with creating safe spaces to help clients heal from such dreadful life occurrences through the use of therapy services. 

The current webinar led by Dr. Lillian Gibson will provide mental health professionals with a practical framework to assess and treat racial trauma. The importance of recognizing both the likenesses and dissimilarities of clients’ and clinicians’ worldviews within the context of treatment will be explained. Participants will learn how to apply culturally-specific approaches when exploring trauma experiences and implement client-centered interventions. 

The on-line training will use a case vignette to guide the presentation and uncover mistakes that can be made when cultural considerations are not utilized. 

Participants will leave the webinar with a clear understanding of racial trauma, an awareness of racial trauma assessment options, the biopsychosocial impacts of trauma, symptom tracking measures, clinical pitfalls to avoid, steps to strengthen a therapeutic alliance, and a list of treatments that may be useful to decrease the effects of racial trauma (when appropriately applied).

Given the increasing diversity of clients seeking mental health care, there is a growing need to enhance the cultural sensitivity of therapeutic interventions with ethnoracial minority populations. One critical form of contemporary racism is the experience of microaggressions: brief, everyday exchanges, in the form of seemingly innocent and innocuous comments or behaviors that send denigrating messages to people of color. Microaggressions in mental health settings are a cause of poor therapeutic alliance and drop-out, representing a barrier to treatment. Repeated exposure to microaggressions can cause psychological unwellness and even trauma symptoms in victims. However, many clinicians are not aware of microaggressions, may commit them unknowingly against clients, and are unsure how to address them in treatment. Thus, increasing awareness of microaggressions is a critical target of clinical training and therapeutic intervention. Dr. Williams will also discuss how to recognize microaggressions, how to assess the impact of microaggressions in clients, and discuss how to address microaggressions when they occur in therapy or real-life. 

Multicultural guidelines and ethical standards dictate that White therapists examine their own racial identity, privilege, and fragility to better serve BIPOC clients. Dr. Fatter will review current trends in multicultural competency and discuss the clinical cost of the therapist being ‘colorblind’. This webinar will specifically focus on aspects of White supremacy culture, White privilege, White fragility, and Helms’ White racial identity model to help therapists self-assess their own White racial identity. Dr. Fatter will discuss clinical examples of ways ‘whiteness’ can show up relationally in clinical settings as well as skills needed to build racial stamina. In addition, Menakem’s H-I-P-P theory of how historical trauma is somatically held in the body will be presented to better understand the typical nervous system response in a White body and ways White therapists can work with their own somatic countertransference reactions when working with BIPOC clients. Dr. Fatter will also describe examples of specific types of microaggressions that can damage the therapeutic relationship. Dr. Fatter will also discuss practical ways to bring up racial identity with all clients and how to do a therapeutic repair when a relational rupture has occurred. 

This course satisfies your cultural diversity requirement.

The Arab/ Middle Eastern community constitutes a culturally rich and diverse ethnic group; however, in contrast to other ethnic groups in the United States,this group has received little attention in the literature.   This seminar will provide a brief description of Arab populations with regard to ethnic, religious and cultural backgrounds.  It will also explore the impact of actual and perceived experiences of discrimination and prejudice on Arab client mental health.  Finally, this seminar will present recommendations for culturally sensitive treatment interventions for clinicians who wish to work with this population.

This course satisfies your cultural diversity requirement.

Treating Arab/Middle Eastern populations in the United States has recently become of interest within the field of clinical psychology because of increased immigration of these groups over the last decade.  Many Arabs have immigrated to benefit from financial and occupational opportunities; however, others have left their countries of origin in the pursuit of greater freedom and to flee from persecution.  Arab sexual minorities are among these groups.  This seminar will provide a brief description of Arab populations with regard to ethnic, religious and cultural backgrounds. It will also explore the experiences of Arabs with same-sex attractions and the impact of familial, cultural, and religious values on the expression of sexuality and identity. Finally,recommendations will be presented to assist clinicians who seek to increase cultural competence working with this unique population.