Ferguson: One Year Later

August 9, 2015August 10, 2015 Amy Novotney1 Comment

Sunday marked exactly one year since 18-year-old Michael Brown’s fatal shooting by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. Brown’s death ignited protests and demonstrations in the St. Louis suburb, and launched a national conversation about racism and police brutality in the United States. Research conducted at the Center for Trauma Recovery at the University of Missouri-St. Louis (UMSL) has shown that members of the Ferguson community still have hope for change and progress.

Five months after Brown’s shooting, while many protests continued, the researchers collected questionnaires filled out by 287 residents of Ferguson and surrounding communities as well as 261 police officers involved in responding to the riots. UMSL psychologist Zoe Peterson shared the study’s initial results at a symposium Sunday on hope and growth in trauma recovery.

Overall, findings showed that both groups experienced significant distress from watching news coverage of the events. In addition, 25 percent of participants met DSM-5 criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder and 38 percent exceeded clinical cutoff levels for depression.

Despite the trauma, more than 80 percent of Ferguson community members were somewhat or extremely hopeful that change was possible, that the situation in their community would improve, and that these positive changes would be meaningful and enduring. Law enforcement officers, however, reported significantly less hope — only about 50 percent felt that positive change was possible and would endure. The team is now conducting additional follow-up with both groups to see how things fare a year after the event.

“What happens in the aftermath of trauma is really important to promoting growth,” said Richard Tedeschi, PhD, psychology professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and the symposium’s discussant. “Helping this community process this trauma and develop some kind of meaning from it is very much needed to ensure positive change endures.”

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

August 9, 2015August 9, 2015 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.

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.

Psychologists Can Help Reduce Racial Profiling in Policing

August 8, 2015August 9, 2015 Amy NovotneyLeave a comment

Psychologists know the statistic well: Although blacks constitute only 12 percent of America’s population, they represent 40 percent of the nation’s prison inmates. Stanford University social psychologist Jennifer Eberhardt, PhD, has been studying the consequences of the psychological association between race and crime for more than a decade. Her findings, which she shared Saturday during a plenary address on race and policing in America, reveal the startling ways that race influences us, even when we don’t think it does.

In one seminal study, for example, participants were subliminally primed with a series of black or white faces on a computer screen, and then watched as blurry pictures of guns and knives came into focus. Eberhardt found that participants — no matter their race — tended to recognize the weapons quicker when exposed to black faces in the primer versus white faces.

More recently, her research has shown that informing white people about the disproportionate incarceration rate of blacks makes them likely to support the expansion of harsh punitive policies, such as California’s Three Strikes Law and similar measures in other states.

Despite the pervasiveness of society’s association between blacks and crime, our behavior in response to those unconscious racial biases can be changed, Eberhardt said. Research has shown, for example, that more training — particularly in the use of firearms — can help police officers overcome racial biases.

She also pointed to the potential role of technology in addressing racial biases, noting that mandating police officer use of body cameras can help improve police relations with the public.

“We need to begin to think about this footage as data, not just as courtroom evidence,” she said. “We can look across the thousands of these videotapes to examine, in the aggregate, whether officers do indeed approach African-Americans in a different way than other groups — whether there’s a more negative tone or pitch to the voice, and whether that can predict whether the interaction is going to escalate. The footage can also be used to more fully appreciate the interactions where things go right and where officers have been able to skillfully de-escalate conflict.”

Identity-Based Bullying Is a Social Justice Issue

August 8, 2015 britneybrinkmanLeave a comment

Most psychologists are likely familiar with bullying and its detrimental effects. However, they may not be familiar with the term “identity-based bullying,” which includes any form of bullying related to the characteristics considered particular to a child’s actual or perceived social identity. Identity-based bullying is one form of discrimination, and it is also a
method through which children learn prejudicial attitudes and stereotypes.

Identity-based bullying can include:

Ostracizing a student with a disability
Teasing a black student by saying he or she is “acting white”
Calling a girl a “slut” or shaming her about sexual activity or her body
Teasing an overweight teen about her/his body
Using anti-gay terms or teasing adolescents who identify as LGB

Participants had the opportunity to learn about these types of bullying during a session organized by Mindy J. Erchull, PhD, and Michelle M. Perfect, PhD. I had the privilege of opening the session with a presentation describing why psychologists should address identity-based bullying as a social justice issue.

Identity-based bullying includes behaviors that are rooted in discrimination. Unfortunately, most discourse within schools about bullying minimizes power relations based on social identities. Some schools intentionally avoid discussing issues of identity out of fear that the conversations will be too controversial. In these cases, the term bullying may be used in place of terms such as sexism, racism and homophobia to minimize discussions about systemic problems rooted in cultural stereotypes and oppression.

During my presentation, I asserted that psychologists should address identity-based bullying as a social justice issue–examining systemic causes so as to change not only the outcomes for individuals, but to transform the processes that lead to identity-based bullying. Identity-based bullying is both reflected in and influenced by cultural factors including legal and political battles, media messages and social movements. Many societal structures (including schools) often serve to reinforce and reproduce messages about inequality.
However, schools can be sites for intervention. At this session, Susan Swearer, PhD, described school-based approaches for identifying, preventing and intervening in bullying, sharing the promising research findings for a number of programs. She discussed how she has engaged multiple stakeholders, such as school nurses, to be involved in the battle against bullying.

Identity-based bullying is a societal problem and the most effective prevention and intervention strategies extend beyond changing any one individual (or a series of individuals). As scholars and mental health professionals, we have a responsibility to embrace such possibilities because all children deserve to attend schools that provide safe, supportive environments that reinforce equality and teach respect for all people.

Is Allison More Likely than Lakisha To Receive an Offer for Mental Health Treatment?

August 7, 2015August 8, 2015 Lea WinermanLeave a comment

The subtle effects of racism and implicit bias are pervasive. Researchers have long known that people with African-American sounding names are at a disadvantage when applying for jobs. Now, research presented in a poster session at the 2015 APA convention suggests that they may also face discrimination when trying to access mental health services.

In a well-known 2003 study, two economists sent more than 5,000 identical resumes to companies in Chicago and Boston. The only difference was that some of the resumes had stereotypically white names on top (Emily and Greg) and some had stereotypically African-American names (Lakisha and Jamal). The researchers found that “Emily” and “Greg” received 50 percent more callbacks than “Lakisha” and “Jamal.”

Psychologist Richard Q. Shin, PhD, of the University of Maryland, wondered whether that effect would translate to the mental health area.

Together with graduate students Jamie Welch and Ijeoma Ezeofor, and colleagues at the University of Vermont, he left voicemail messages for 371 Maryland mental health provicers. The messages — recorded by the same woman, using the same wording — purported to be from a prospective client named either Lakisha or Allison, looking for counseling services.

The researchers found that “Lakisha” and “Allison” received calls back from the mental health providers at the same rate. However, “Allison” was significantly more likely (12 percent) to receive an offer of services (as opposed, for example, to being told that the provider wasn’t accepting new clients).

Welch says that psychologists, counselors and others need to be aware of their own implicit biases.

“It’s easy for us to think we’re above the implicit biases that are pervasive in our society,” he says. “But we’re part of that society.”

In future studies, the researchers want to find out whether “Lakisha” faces more discrimination when her voicemail message uses African-American vernacular language. They also want to conduct a larger study with more geographic diversity, and to explore the effects of names from other ethnic backgrounds.

APA Working Group Reports on Stress and Health Disparities

August 7, 2015 aricpratherLeave a comment

An APA working group formed in 2013 to explore stress and health disparities presented its first findings Friday at the APA convention in Toronto, focusing on depression, cardiovascular disease and cancer.

Not surprisingly, these problems occur disproportionately among African-Americans, people of low socioeconomic status and sexual minorities. Research has found that health behaviors are critical contributors to these disparities, the researchers said. For instance, African-Americans may be more likely to succumb to heart disease because they have less access to health care services or fewer opportunities to eat healthy. There are psychological contributions as well, specifically stress.

During the symposium, Elizabeth Bronodolo, PhD, a professor at St. John’s University in New York City, discussed the importance of understanding the various levels of stress to which people from vulnerable groups are exposed. In addition she stressed the role of community factors, such as neighborhood violence or a loss of jobs in a community. The working group also looked at how stress contributes to health disparities, including the development of social cognitive schemas that contribute to how one views the world, and thus sets up vicious cycles of stress.

Also in the presentation, Cheryl Woods Giscombe, PhD, described the working group’s recommendations, many of which touched both on individual interventions that take into account the context in which they are delivered, and on population-level interventions.

Health disparities are one of the greatest challenges to the health-care system and to population health at large. APA should be applauded for taking a leadership role in attempting to mitigate this problem.

Psychologists Address Police Interactions with Boys and Men of Color

August 7, 2015August 7, 2015 britneybrinkman1 Comment

Do you know that feeling when you hear something really meaningful? For me it often involves a pit in my stomach and the chills. It is not an entirely pleasant feeling, but it is a helpful reminder that something important is happening that I don’t want to miss.

That’s the feeling I got at the beginning of the session “Working with Critical Gate Keepers to Ensure Safety and Justice for Boys and Men of Color.” I was moved right away by Dr. Christopher Liang’s passionate opening in which he described why he and Dr. Helen Neville decided to co-chair the symposium. He shared his reactions to the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, (and other similar incidents) and called on psychologists to do more to address the epidemic of police violence against boys and men of color.

The speakers covered a range of important topics. Warren Spielberg, PhD, discussed the experiences of boys of color in school, including the fact that many are accused of cheating if they do well, are blamed for fights, and are generally described in negative ways. Many boys cope with this treatment through academic dis-identification, where they decide it is better not to care about school than to experience the emotional pain that could accompany these interactions.

Most of the panelists discussed the fact that psychologists can play a larger role in screening and training police officers to reduce bias against boys and men of color. They can work with community members to develop guidelines and use the research on prejudice reduction to train police officers. This work is often challenging and it may take years to develop relationships with police departments. Lorraine Greene, PhD, noted that “strong partnerships between police and males of color require trust and confidence to have legitimacy and justice.”

Nevertheless, the success stories shared during the symposium were inspirational and provided the audience with practical suggestions about how to do this work in our home communities. The symposium ended with a call to action—audience members were given notecards to write down our plans to put what we learned into practice in their own lives.

Change can start with us.

2015 APA Annual Convention

Category: Race