Charmain Jackman, PhD, was looking for a psychotherapist. As a practicing psychologist in the Boston area, Jackman was well equipped to find someone to meet her own mental health needs. She had connections. She had resources. She lived in a city with no shortage of providers. But there was a problem.
“It took me a year to find a therapist who was a woman of color, and who also took my insurance,” Jackman says.
As Jackman experienced so keenly, the mental health workforce does not reflect the diversity of the United States. According to APA’s Center for Workforce Studies, 86% of psychologists are white, and other mental health professions are similarly homogeneousopens in new window. Already at a disadvantage owing to structural disparities people from underrepresented communities are often unable to find providers who look like them or share their cultural experiences.
“It can be a burden to feel like you need to explain your culture, or explain your experience as a person of color, to a therapist,” says Jackman. “With our history of experiencing racism and oppression, it’s very difficult to enter therapy and wonder, is this person going to harm me or alienate me in this vulnerable space?”
Melanie Domenech Rodríguez, PhD, a professor of psychology at Utah State University, shares Jackman’s concerns.
“The reality is that people don’t need to share the same identities to work together,” she says. “But another reality is that a lot of people of color and folxopens in new window with diverse gender identities and sexual orientations have had negative experiences in a mental health context because their therapist did not understand the importance or the relevance of their identities to their presenting concerns.”
In light of this pervasive need, several psychologists have launched or helped create innovative new platforms that increase the visibility of providers of color, and APA’s recently relaunched Psychologist Locator now allows users to search for providers by ethnicity. By bridging the gaps left by conventional therapist directories, these new tools connect providers of color with the people who need them.
Fostering connection, community and healing
In January, Jackman founded InnoPsychopens in new window, a national directory of therapists and professional development platform that aims to change cultural narratives about who therapists are—and who therapy is for.
Its tagline is “Changing the face of therapy.”
“There are cultural narratives within historically marginalized communities, and also messages from larger society, that in subtle and explicit ways communicate that therapy is not for people of color,” Jackman says.
Within communities of color, in which people have historically faced unethical or poor treatment from the medical establishment, these messages might include attitudes and mindsets about mental health problems being a sign of weakness, or therapy being for rich white people, Jackman explains.
Externally, Jackman says that the lack of representation of people of color in research studies, in images of therapists and in the mental health workforce just reinforces the idea that therapy was not designed for them.
“InnoPsych aims to change these cultural narratives by providing education about mental health and access to culturally responsive therapists,” she says. “We also are working to increase the pipeline by bringing more people of color into the field and providing the necessary tools for practitioners of color to start their own businesses in mental health.”
Jackman describes InnoPsych as a “visual platform” that features high-impact headshots in its provider profiles. Users can search by ethnicity, location, area of specialty, insurance type and desired service. In addition to psychologists, the directory lists social workers, counselors and psychiatrists.
“The goal is to provide education on the importance and value of mental health and make it accessible for people to find therapists of color who come from their culture,” Jackman says.
Ayanaopens in new window, an app created by entrepreneur Eric Coly, operates with a similar ethos—with a twist. Rather than facilitating in-person services, Ayana matches its users with licensed therapists who provide teletherapy by phone, video call or text through the app.
According to Coly, Ayana users fill out questionnaires about their backgrounds, identities and needs, and an algorithm matches them with a provider. Ayana’s advisory board, which includes three psychologists, ensures that the service is aligned with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and other regulations, he says.
Board member Wei-Chin Hwang, PhD, a professor of clinical psychology at Claremont McKenna College in California, says Ayana stands out because it’s intersectional: It’s cognizant of the ways each individual’s race, class, gender and other identities overlap.
“We provide access to therapists who are culturally competent, and who have expertise in diversity issues and intersectional identities,” says Hwang.
This increases the client’s comfort and engagement with therapy, which translates to better outcomes, he says.
Also, Ayana’s telehealth component addresses some of the limitations and barriers that many people face when trying to access in-person services, such as problems with transportation or child care, Hwang says.
“This online platform gives clients unprecedented privacy and flexibility,” agrees board member Domenech Rodríguez. She immediately recognized the utility of Ayana in her small community in Utah when she first learned about it.
“As far as I know, I’m the only Spanish-speaking Latinx licensed psychologist in the area,” though there are many Latinx people living there, she says. She mentors several of them, which precludes them from accessing her services.
“This kind of situation is common, where people with minoritized identities are also members of small communities of people that share identities,” she says. “Even if a provider is accessible, that provider may not be accessible to them.”
Ayana’s telehealth component is especially useful during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has highlighted the extant racial health disparities and barriers in access to quality treatment that have plagued communities of color for years, says Hwang.
“Teletherapy can help meet some mental health needs during this stressful time in which people are physically isolating and yet still in need of treatment,” he says. “This is especially important for communities of color, where we have seen that there is a higher proportion of infection, as well as a higher death rate.”
Coly says that demand from users seeking therapy has been intense from the beginning. “We want to modernize traditional counseling,” he says. “We’re asking our users to trust us for a chance to heal through our product. From us, that requires a great deal of integrity, cultural humility and respect.”
Benefits for providers
Tools like InnoPsych and Ayana—as well as similarly minded platforms such as Therapy for Black Girlsopens in new window, Therapy for Latinxopens in new window and the BEAM (Black Emotional and Mental Health) Collectiveopens in new window—offer providers of color a chance to boost their professional profiles and increase their caseloads. But these tools may have other benefits for them, too.
For instance, through InnoPsych, Jackman offers business coaching, workshops and other professional resources for providers interested in starting a private practice.
“Launching a practice can be a mysterious process, particularly for people of color who may not have many role models for it. We don’t learn these skills in graduate school, and there aren’t many mentors who look like us,” says Jackman. “InnoPsych helps practitioners of color see private practice as a viable option.”
In addition, providers may find working with clients from their own cultural background especially fulfilling, says Ayana board member Cheryl Grills, PhD.
“I’m not saying that it’s impossible to connect with someone who doesn’t share your identity,” says Grills, who is a professor of psychology and director of the Psychology Applied Research Center at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. “But when a clinician gets an opportunity to actually engage their cultural worldview and experiences as part of the healing process, that can enrich their professional experience.”
Experienced providers who are interested in joining the InnoPsych directoryopens in new window or applying to work with Ayanaopens in new window should visit the website of each group for requirements, instructions and other details.
