Category: Curriculum

‘But How Do I do It?’ Application of Theory to be Focus of Revised Mulitucultural Guidelines

britneybrinkmanLeave a comment

Only 20 percent of doctoral degrees in psychology go to students of color, despite the fact that 40 percent of Americans are people of color, according to Nayeli Chavez-Duenas, PhD. Even with the shifting demographics in the United States, studies have demonstrated low levels of cultural competency among psychologists. The proposed revisions to APA’s multicultural guidelines are designed to address this problem by offering concrete suggestions for preparing psychologists to become multiculturally competent.

 The current guidelines were approved in 2002 and have been studied in most psychology training programs, providing important direction about preparation of psychologists for working in a diverse world,

“Addressing culture within psychology requires complex thinking,” said Patricia Arredondo, EdD, one of the lead scholars working on the proposed revisions. This comment reflects the spirit of the revisions, which will seek to build on the current guidelines by maintaining the core principles, while emphasizing ways to operationalize and apply the values. revised multicultural guidelines

I regularly teach our required diversity/ multicultural competence course to master’s students and one of the questions they often as me is, “But how do I do it?” Getting buy-in for the importance of multicultural competence is a needed first step for some students but even those who fully embrace the idea in theory struggle to learn how to put it into practice. The proposed revisions offer strategies for just that.

The new guidelines would offer ways to deconstruct and increase self-awareness about one’s own ethnic identity, said Hector Adames, PsyD. They provide specific recommendations about developing awareness about various aspects of identity (such as one’s identity as a white person), while encouraging psychologists to “use multiple lenses to understand complex processes, especially complex human experiences and identities, ” according to Adames.

I am especially enthusiastic about the proposed recommendations for skill development, including how to engage in dialogue and behavioral change.

Although the revisions are not yet available (they are undergoing the approval process within APA), I am excited to take what I have learned back home with me. I will certainly be integrating some new ideas as I prepare my fall syllabi in the coming weeks.

We Need to Teach the Teachers: Training for the Future of Psychology – An Integrated Primary Care Curriculum.

kipppietrantonioapaLeave a comment

IMG_0454It’s almost impossible these days to discuss psychological clinical work in the United States without also discussing how it fits into an integrated health care model. Luckily, the Div. 38 (Health Psychology) Clinical Services Counsel (CSC) is on the job. In the dark corridors of the Toronto Convention Centre, a few psychologists presented their proposed primary care curriculum to a clutch of students, faculty and clinicians.

They described a critical problem in psychological training programs: Students need to learn how to work in integrated health care, but we don’t have anyone to teach them — at least not on the mass scale necessary to train a generation of clinicians for a rapidly changing health care model. Most faculty in psychological training programs do not have experience or training in this type of treatment.

Essentially, we need to teach the teachers to teach the future of psychology.

How do we do this? Shanda Wells PsyD, described a curriculum the CSC is developing. It includes a plethora of materials that have been produced to help graduate faculty to teach integrated health care psychology — “beautiful Powerpoints, like you have never seen before,” plus handouts, pictures/models, videos, and even pre/post tests that have been produced by the committee to help develop teachers in graduate schools. She emphasized and repeated one point: “The materials are free and flexible”

IMG_0456

She and her colleagues showed a few of the videos, which featured high-quality cinematography and great use of diverse actors in real world settings. One video shows a psychologist in a “doctor’s office” talking to a man about behavior interventions for sleep. The video feels real and the acting is solid. It doesn’t feel like a generic psychology training video made in the 1980s. It feels current and relevant.

It feels like something students will respond to.

Nancy Ruddy, PhD, spoke of  the importance of setting expectations for the future of psychology for both students and faculty. The days are gone of “solo practice where you sit alone in a room with a box of Kleenex and a lamp,” she said. She described the importance of seeing ourselves as a component of treatment in holistic health care as opposed to islands off by ourselves.

In addition, committee members plan to make themselves available for consultation about the curriculum. They described the importance of allowing an “ongoing discussion” around this type of training experience. And they said they are excited to see how these materials get used in training settings and want to hear feedback on how they can improve them.

IMG_0457

The materials will be available for mass consumption soon. For more information, contact the Div. 38 (Health Psychology) Clinical Services Counsel (CSC).