In August, the APA Council of Representatives adopted new multicultural guidelines for psychologists. Multicultural Guidelines: An Ecological Approach to Context, Identity, and Intersectionality (2017) includes 10 guidelines and accompanying case studies to provide psychologists with a framework for providing multiculturally competent services. (A separate committee is revising guidelines on race and ethnicity.)
Multicultural competency is necessary for psychologists working in all domains: practice, research, consultation and education, says Caroline Clauss-Ehlers, PhD, a psychologist at Rutgers University and chair of the Task Force on Re-Envisioning the Multicultural Guidelines for the 21st Century.
"When you are working with someone—a client, a student, a consultee, a research participant—they bring their own identity and cultural background," Clauss-Ehlers says. "To be responsive to that person means being aware of their cultural background. It defines their experience and who they are, and will help you understand them."
The guidelines are:
- Psychologists seek to recognize and understand that identity and self-definition are fluid and complex and that the interaction between the two is dynamic. To this end, psychologists appreciate that intersectionality is shaped by the multiplicity of the individual's social contexts.
- Psychologists aspire to recognize and understand that as cultural beings, they hold attitudes and beliefs that can influence their perceptions of and interactions with others as well as their clinical and empirical conceptualizations. As such, psychologists strive to move beyond conceptualizations rooted in categorical assumptions, biases, and/or formulations based on limited knowledge about individuals and communities.
- Psychologists strive to recognize and understand the role of language and communication through engagement that is sensitive to the lived experience of the individual, couple, family, group, community and/or organizations with whom they interact. Psychologists also seek to understand how they bring their own language and communication to these interactions.
- Psychologists endeavor to be aware of the role of the social and physical environment in the lives of clients, students, research participants, and/or consultees.
- Psychologists aspire to recognize and understand historical and contemporary experiences with power, privilege and oppression. As such, they seek to address institutional barriers and related inequities, disproportionalities, and disparities of law enforcement, administration of criminal justice, educational, mental health, and other systems as they seek to promote justice, human rights, and access to quality and equitable mental and behavioral health services.
- Psychologists seek to promote culturally adaptive interventions and advocacy within and across systems, including prevention, early intervention and recovery.
- Psychologists endeavor to examine the profession's assumptions and practices within an international context, whether domestically or internationally-based, and consider how this globalization has an impact on the psychologist's self-definition, purpose, role, and function.
- Psychologists seek awareness and understanding of how developmental stages and life transitions intersect with the larger biosociocultural context, how identity evolves as a function of such intersections and how these different socialization and maturation experiences influence worldview and identity.
- Psychologists strive to conduct culturally appropriate and informed research, teaching, supervision, consultation, assessment, interpretation, diagnosis, dissemination, and evaluation of efficacy as they address the first four levels of the Layered Ecological Model of the Multicultural Guidelines.
- Psychologists actively strive to take a strength-based approach when working with individuals, families, groups, communities and organizations that seeks to build resilience and decrease trauma within the sociocultural context.
