Working With Refugees

This video demonstrates and discusses key skills useful for professionals when working with refugees.

The refugee count increases annually, however there is minimal training in mental health fields that provides the awareness, knowledge, and skills to effectively work with this population. In this video, Dr. Fred Bemak demonstrates and discusses key skills such as culturally responsive psychotherapy, strength-based interventions, emphasis on developing cultural empowerment useful for professionals when working with refugees.

The demonstration in this video is framed by an informative discussion with the therapist hosted by Dr. Rita Chi-Ying Chung. This video features an actor portraying a client on the basis of a composite of cases.

The model being used is the Multi-Phase Model of Psychotherapy, Counseling, Human Rights and Social Justice (MPM) developed by Bemak and Chung. The MPM was developed as a culturally responsive model for working with refugee and immigrant populations. This model has expanded over the years to be effectively utilized with a broader range of clientele as described in the 2023 Chung and Bemak book reference cited here entitled, Social Justice Multicultural Psychology and Counseling.

Fred Bemak, EdD, is a professor emeritus at George Mason University (GMU) and founder and executive director of Counselors Without Borders. His career has involved training, consulting, presenting, and teaching focused on cross-cultural psychology, race relations, racism, refugee and immigrant mental health, and human rights and social justice. He began his career as an Upward Bound summer counselor and years later, at the age of 26, became one of the youngest directors of an Upward Bound Program in the United States.

Dr. Bemak has received four Fulbright awards (Brazil, Scotland, Turkey, and Malta); has held faculty appointments in Australia, Brazil, Malta, Mexico, Turkey, and Taiwan; was the recipient of a Kellogg Foundation Fellowship in International Leadership and Development (Latin America and the Caribbean) and a World Rehabilitation Fund International Exchange of Experts Fellowship to undertake research at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences in India. He has given keynote addresses in the United States as well as Australia, Azerbaijan, Cyprus, India, Korea, Singapore, Turkey, and the United Kingdom and holds an Honorary Distinguished Professorship from Amity University, India.

Dr. Bemak has won multiple awards including the Commonwealth of Virginia State Council for Higher Education Outstanding Faculty Award and the GMU Presidential Diversity and Inclusion Award. He is a fellow of APA Divisions 17 and 52.

Rita Chi-Ying Chung, PhD, is an emerita professor at George Mason University (GMU). Her research focuses on cross-cultural psychology, social justice, racial justice, racial dialogues, immigrant and refugee psychosocial adjustment and adaptation, the trafficking of Asian children, and post-disaster counseling. She has presented and published extensively in these areas.

Dr. Chung has lived in five different countries and has worked in the Asia, Pacific Rim region, Europe, Africa, and the Americas. Prior to being at GMU, Dr. Chung was a consultant for the World Bank, an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University and George Washington University, and an assistant professor at the Ohio State University. She arrived in the United States in 1990 as a postdoctoral fellow at the National Research Center for Asian American Mental Health at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). At UCLA Dr. Chung was the project director of the NIMH-funded Chinese American Psychiatric Epidemiological Study and also conducted the first NIMH-funded US conference on Southeast Asian Refugee Re-Education Camp Detainees and Vietnamese Amerasians.

As a result of her work on Asian immigrants, she was invited by Save the Children, UK, to be a consultant on their human trafficking program in Myanmar (Burma) and later invited as a featured speaker to the United Nations in New York to present on cultural factors in sex trafficking of Asian women/girls. Dr. Chung has consulted for the US Armed Forces on a high-profile military court-martial regarding cultural perspectives on sexual abuse and rape.

She was awarded the Commonwealth of Virginia Commendation Award for her social justice and human rights work, and was a recipient of the Commonwealth of Virginia’s highest award in academia, the State Council for Higher Education of Virginia Outstanding Faculty Award. She also received the GMU Spirit of the King (Martin Luther King) faculty award for her work on race dialogues, and the GMU Presidential Medal of Honor for Diversity and Inclusion. She is a fellow of APA Divisions 45 and 52.

Bemak, F., & Chung, R. C-Y. (2021). Contemporary refugees: Challenges and a culturally responsive intervention model for effective practice. The Counseling Psychologist, (Special Issue), 49(2), 305-324.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0011000020972182

Chung, R. C-Y., & Bemak, F. (2023). Social justice multicultural psychology and counseling. New York, New York: Oxford, University Press

Bemak, F., & Chung, R. C-Y. (2021). A culturally responsive intervention model for modern day refugee: A multiphase model of psychotherapy, social justice, and human rights. In J.D. Aten & J. Hwang (Eds.). Refugee mental health (pp.103-136). Washington D.C.: American Psychological Association.

Bemak, F. & Chung, R. C-Y. (2017). Refugee trauma: Culturally responsive counseling interventions. Journal of Counseling and Development, 95, 299-308. (Special issue on traumatology).

Bemak, F., Chung, R. C-Y., & Pedersen, P. B. (2003). Counseling refugees: A psychosocial approach to innovative multicultural interventions. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing

APA Videos

Working With Immigrants
Rita Chi-Ying Chung, PhD

Reflections on Race and Ethnicity in the Therapeutic Setting
Rita Chi-Ying Chung, PhD, Fred Bemak, PhD, Thema Bryant, PhD, and Joseph M. Cervantes, PhD

Working With Arab Americans
Naji Abi-Hashem, PhD

Working With Asian American Clients
Jean Lau Chin, EdD, ABPP

Multicultural Feminist Therapy With Adolescent Girls of Color
Thema Bryant, PhD

Psychotherapy With Black and African American Clients
Erlanger Turner, PhD

Inclusive Cultural Empathy in Practice 
Paul B. Pedersen, PhD, and Jon Carlson, PsyD, EdD

APA Books 

Refugee Mental Health
Jamie D. Aten, PhD

Mental Health Practice With Immigrant and Refugee Youth: A Socioecological Framework
B. Heidi Ellis, PhD, Saida M. Abdi, PhD, and Jeffrey P. Winer, PhD

Trauma and Racial Minority Immigrants: Turmoil, Uncertainty, and Resistance
Pratyusha Tummala-Narra, PhD

Cultural Humility: Engaging Diverse Identities in Therapy
Joshua N. Hook, PhD, Don E. Davis, PhD, Jesse Owen, PhD, and Cirleen DeBlaere, PhD

Addressing Cultural Complexities in Counseling and Clinical Practice: An Intersectional Approach, Fourth Edition
Pamela A. Hays, PhD

Multicultural Therapy: A Practice Imperative
Melba J. T. Vasquez, PhD, and Josephine D. Johnson, PhD