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Women in the perinatal period face a unique set of mental health challenges as they navigate both physical changes and emotional transitions. Perinatal mental health has been linked to child outcomes such as social–emotional development, cognitive development, and physical growth. In addition, women of racial/ethnic minority groups are confronted with barriers to accessing services and are therefore less likely to utilize mental health services. While international attention has recently focused on the experiences of women of color in the perinatal period, Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) women are largely overlooked. This review explores the intersections of perinatal and Asian American mental health literature, including access barriers, acculturative stress, battling stereotypes, and discrimination. Each of these factors should be understood within the context of the historical treatment of Asian Americans. Special considerations for developing programs designed to support and empower AAPI women during the perinatal period include utilizing a collaborative approach, integrating traditional values, and conceptualizing challenges within the context of each socioecological level (e.g., individual, family, and systems level). This article centers on the experiences of cisgender AAPI women, and further research is needed centering nonbinary birthing folks. To develop mental health services and programs with cultural humility, providers should center both individual and community perspectives and approach conversations from a position of transparency and openness. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
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Previous qualitative studies have noted that the Orthodox Jewish dating system, often referred to as shidduch dating, has become difficult for many. The aim of this study was to assess the way some of these problems influence well-being. To minimize response bias, some questions pertaining to problems in the shidduch system were added to a larger communal survey. Participants were asked to rate the severity of the following problems on a Likert scale of 1–100: (a) pressure to get married before you feel ready, (b) lack of dating opportunity, (c) superficiality of dating criteria and resume system, (d) too much gender segregation makes it hard to meet people, (e) stigma and lack of respect for singles; (f) parental overinvolvement in the dating process, (g) problems related to matchmakers, and (h) lack of education regarding dating, intimacy, and creating meaningful relationships. Participants also completed the Depression Scale (Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression–10), the Generalized Anxiety Disorder Seven-Item Scale, and the Satisfaction with Life Scale. Two hundred fifty-five Orthodox Jewish single individuals responded to the study. A correlational analysis revealed that most of the problems noted correlated with mental health measures, and differentially impacted females where females rated most of the problems as more severe, and appeared to be more negatively impacted by them. This study provides some awareness regarding the impact problems in shidduch dating has on well-being and can help clinicians working with this population better understand the way these problems influence mental health. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
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Most psychotherapists will have more than one client with a disability during their career. It is harmful to disabled clients for psychotherapists not to be adequately prepared for work with disabled people, as is true for any cultural identity. There is a general lack of guidance on how to integrate the disability identity and experience into therapeutic work with disabled clients. Disability affirmative therapy (Olkin, 2017) is a guide to therapy case conceptualization with disabled clients meant to be used alongside a therapist’s typical theoretical approach. The authors, two disabled clinicians, use a case example to illustrate how disability affirmative therapy can be used with clients. The authors illustrate this through a composite client, Brice, a White disabled male veteran. To highlight therapeutically relevant aspects of disability culture, the authors introduce spoon theory to communicate about a disabled person’s capacity. This article adds to the literature on therapeutic interventions that can be helpful with disabled clients. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
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Researchers have long documented that Latine1 children have a lower prevalence rate for diagnosis of autism than their peers. The difference in prevalence rates is not due to autism occurring less in Latine children or even differences in clinical presentation, but it is instead a result of diagnostic disparities due to barriers to accessing a high-quality evaluation that occur at the systemic, community, and individual level. Psychologists, regardless of the setting in which they work, are uniquely situated to address these barriers through culturally affirming practices. The current article will describe the prevalence of autism within Latine communities, overview diagnostic disparities experienced by Latine children with autism, identify barriers to accessing evaluations, and provide best practices for employing culturally affirming practices to eliminate inequities for Latine children with autism. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
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The American Psychological Association’s (APA’s) release of the multicultural guidelines (Multicultural Guidelines: An Ecological Approach to Context, Identity, and Intersectionality, American Psychological Association, 2017, and Guidelines on Race and Ethnicity in Psychology: Promoting Responsiveness and Equity, American Psychological Association, 2019) are a welcomed advance to the conceptualization and practice of culture in psychology. These guidelines mark a significant expansion of the previous Multicultural Guidelines (Guidelines on Multicultural Education, Training, Research, Practice and Organizational Change for Psychologists, American Psychological Association, 2002), which include important advances for the development of multicultural psychotherapies. It is argued that these revisions make them substantially distinct from previous guidelines (American Psychological Association, 1990, 2002) and entail a new generation of multicultural psychotherapies, herein called cultural psychotherapies. Furthermore, these guidelines are particularly timely and applicable to cope with social/racial unrest and in promoting international collaborations. However, in the process of broadening cultural approaches, confusion is created in already contested and evolving cultural concepts. The goal of this article is to clarify and examine the practice implications of cultural psychotherapies and differentiate them from their two predecessors, universalist psychotherapies and racial and ethnic minority psychotherapies. Psychotherapies are distinguished by describing the APA’s multicultural guidelines and contrasting them through two dimensions: (a) meaning of cultural constructs and (b) research methods and evidence. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
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Racial trauma refers to emotional injury from direct or vicarious exposure to racist violence. One responsibility for antioppressive psychotherapy is to effectively support Black clients coping with the impacts of police brutality and anti-Black violence, but little is known about how psychotherapists attempt to fulfill this responsibility in routine practice. This survey study investigated N = 91 psychotherapists’ (majority identifying as White, cisgender women) perceptions of five potential interventions that could be used to support Black clients experiencing racial trauma related to media coverage of anti-Black violence and the potential influence of professional characteristics on these perceptions. Psychotherapists completed an online survey that included a hypothetical client scenario. Psychotherapists rated their perceptions of intervention types, specifically the following: emotional expression, value-guided action, coping skills, cognitive restructuring, and self-disclosure responses. Psychotherapists rated the emotional expression response option as most helpful, followed by value-guided action and coping skills. Self-disclosure and cognitive restructuring were viewed as less helpful. Psychotherapists of color rated the use of self-disclosure more positively than White psychotherapists. Endorsement of being influenced by cognitive-behavioral therapy was significantly and positively associated with positive perceptions of the values, cognitive restructuring, and coping psychotherapist response options. In contrast, the degree to which one endorsed being influenced by psychodynamic psychotherapy was negatively associated with perceived helpfulness of values and coping-focused psychotherapist responses. Implications for psychotherapist training and continuing education are discussed. Additional research is needed to explore clients’ perceptions of the degree of support and helpfulness of varied therapeutic responses in these contexts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
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Thu, 14 Mar 2024 00:00:00 GMT