Question

Describe how the American Psychological Association has responded to the need to provide services to a diverse client population.

Answer 1

There is increasing motivation among psychologists to understand culture and ethnicity as important factors which govern human lives and which need to be addressed in a sensitive and open manner in order to provide appropriate psychological services. This increased motivation for improving quality of psychological services to ethnic and culturally diverse populations has led to the constitution of several professional guidelines and sub-committees within the APA which provide a standardised and ethical framework for Counselors, psychotherapists, academicians, reerachers and social health workers.

In 1988, The APA's Board of Ethnic Minority Affairs (BEMA) established a Task Force on the Delivery of Services to Ethnic Minority Populations in order to expand its responsiveness to the psychological service needs associated with cultural diversity. Within the United States, some of the populations of concern which have been identified include American Indians, Asian Americans, and Hispanics/Latinos. In addition, there has been more and more efforts towards addressing the psychosocial issues associated with acculturation in the refugee and immigrant groups and established U.S. subcultures such as Amish, Hasidic Jewish, and rural Appalachian people. The clients referred to may be clients, organizations, government and/or community agencies.

The APA has ove re years expanded the focus of research to cater to the psychological services to the ethnic minority populations regarding diverse topics such as:

Minority utilization of mental health services;

cultural differences in the Relative effectiveness of directed versus nondirected styles of therapy

Competency in skill set for working with specific ethnic populations

Training of psychologists in understanding The role of cultural values in treatment and applying Appropriate counseling and therapy models

These areas of research point towards the growing realisation within the APA for diversifying it’s scope in order to reach out and address the issues pertaining to the special problems of the clients due to their unique ethnic or cultural contexts.