Fulfills requirement: Diversity and Multicultural Counseling
Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) and Native American communities have distinct histories, cultures, identities, and lived experiences. Effective mental health care requires clinicians to understand how culture, history, identity, family, spirituality, socioeconomic circumstances, discrimination, trauma, and other factors can influence mental health, help-seeking, assessment, treatment, and the therapeutic relationship.
This advanced beginner/intermediate course provides mental health professionals with a foundation for culturally responsive counseling and psychotherapy with AANHPI and Native American clients. Emphasizing cultural humility and within-group diversity, the course examines historical and contemporary factors affecting mental health, including immigration and refugee experiences, displacement and colonization, discrimination and race-based violence, socioeconomic disparities, trauma, substance use, family and gender roles, spirituality, sexuality, acculturation, and language and communication.
The course also explores disparities in mental health service utilization and the cultural and structural barriers that may contribute to stigma, unmet needs, treatment disengagement, and premature termination. Special attention is given to cultural myths, internalized racism, historical and intergenerational trauma, and other experiences that may affect psychological well-being and clinical care. The clinical portion focuses on applying cultural knowledge to practice. Participants learn strategies for building rapport, conducting culturally responsive assessment, developing treatment plans, selecting appropriate measures and interventions, and adapting therapeutic approaches to clients’ cultural values, beliefs, communication styles, and family systems. Clinical considerations across the lifespan and individual, group, and family therapy approaches are addressed.
Throughout the course, participants are encouraged to move beyond stereotypes and assumptions toward an individualized, collaborative approach that can strengthen therapeutic relationships, reduce the risk of misdiagnosis and inappropriate treatment, and improve engagement and outcomes for these client populations.
Content (available in audio and text formats) includes original written materials and an interview with Drs. Helen Hsu and Jan Estrellado.
Some of the content in this course appears in other Zur Institute courses.
Educational Objectives
This course will teach the participant to:
- Explain key historical and cultural factors affecting the mental health and well-being of AANHPI and Native American clients, including trauma, discrimination, civil rights, family and spiritual values, and socioeconomic factors.
- Discuss attitudes, cultural and structural barriers, and other factors that influence mental health treatment seeking and engagement among AANHPI and Native American clients.
- Identify individual and intersecting factors—including cultural identity, immigration and citizenship status, language, acculturation, gender, sexuality, religion and spirituality, socioeconomic status, disability, and lifespan development—that inform culturally responsive assessment and treatment.
- Describe culturally responsive approaches for addressing common presenting concerns and challenges among AANHPI and Native American clients, including cultural myths, internalized racism, historical and intergenerational trauma, and other culture-related clinical considerations.
Syllabus
Part One: Culturally Responsive Mental Health Care with Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Clients
- Introduction
- U.S. Census data
- Disparities between perceived mental health needs and utilization of services
- Need for culturally-responsive treatment
- Defining culture, race, and ethnicity
- Prevalence of mental illness and substance use disorders among AANHPIs
- Need to disaggregate data on depression, suicidality, substance use
- Perceived need and utilization of mental health care among AANHPIs
- Barriers to utilization of mental health services and how to overcome them
- Beliefs and stigmas commonly found among AANHPI populations
- Intersectionality and assessment
- Country of origin
- Immigration, trauma, and citizenship status
- Language and communication
- Acculturation/assimilation
- Geographic location
- Family and gender roles
- Education and socioeconomic status
- Sexuality
- Religion and spirituality
- Disability status
- Useful assessment measures for AANHPI clients
- Outreach with AANHPIs
- Counseling and psychotherapy with AANHPI clients
- General issues in establishing rapport
- Choosing individual, family, and group therapy and mutual help groups
- Addressing key themes in counseling and psychotherapy with AANHPIs
- Model minority myth
- Perpetual foreigner stereotype and rise in race-based trauma since COVID-19 pandemic
- Intergenerational trauma
- Mental health issues across the lifespan
- Working with AANHPI females
- Working with AANHPI males
- Capitalizing upon individual, familial, and cultural strengths
- Interview with Helen Hsu, Psy.D., and Jan Estrellado, Ph.D.
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- Terminology and diversity within the Asian populations
- Reasons for low participation rates in mental health treatment and high rates of dropout
- Cultural, geographic, language, and financial barriers
- Ruptures in therapeutic alliance due to therapist microaggressions and faulty assumptions
- How to support clients living authentically within the context of their cultural values
- Addressing internalized oppression and intergenerational trauma
Part Two: Culturally Responsive Mental Health Care with Native American Clients
- Understanding the culture and mental health needs of Native Americans
- Native Americans today
- Native American tribal membership
- Dispelling myths about Native Americans
- Social and economic factors
- Lingering impact of historical trauma
- Income disparities and poverty
- Unemployment
- Housing and homelessness
- Educational disparities
- Trauma
- Violent crime
- Domestic violence
- Child abuse
- Health disparities
- Native American’s traditional world view
- Values
- Family
- Community
- Spirituality
- Working with Native American clients: Putting cultural awareness into practice
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- Recognizing assumptions, stereotypes, and biases
- Awareness of cultural differences
- Building trust
- Self-assessment of values
- Cultural humility
- Addressing microaggressions
- Addressing assumptions in therapy
- Native American perspectives relevant to mental health treatment
- Concepts of health and illness
- Traditional medicine and healing
- Behavioral health problems among Native Americans
- Traumatic stress
- Alcohol and substance use disorders
- Preferences regarding behavioral health services
- Barriers to treatment
- General guidelines for culturally responsive mental health treatment of Native Americans
- Practical suggestions for the first session
- Further guidelines for intake, assessment, and treatment planning
