From Treatment Teams to Cross-cultural Clinical Research: Challenging the Status Quo of “Identity-blind” Mental Health Services

Often in clinical treatment team meetings (when mental health providers discuss their patients, their professional relationship and potential issues impeding treatment) diversity is discussed only when the patient is introduced. For example, “Mr. Z is a 33-year-old, bisexual male of Guatemalan descent.” However, the discussion often ends there and an “identity-blind” lens is applied. It doesn’t end with treatment teams; it extends to cross-cultural clinical research too. Researchers and clinicians often try to apply Western counseling techniques and interventions without considering existing cultural norms or practices.

This panel will focus on challenges of encountering this ignorant behavior as well as tactics to confronting "identity-blind" treatment or research teams. Diversity will include dis/ability issues of patients, racial/ethnic differences of providers and patients, gender, socioeconomic issues or differences and more.

The moderator and panelists are all clinicians and/or researchers of varying titles and interests who have shared the topic at hand in their professional, clinical endeavors. The moderator will facilitate an exciting dialogue regarding: (a) Ways of building on clinical considerations of intersectionality and diversity by taking a structurally competent stance (e.g., Ali & Sichel, 2014; 2017, Metzel & Hansen, 2014), (b) Encouraging teammates to become aware of cultural differences in application of interventions across culture, (c) Development of innovative fusions of Western and local healing traditions, and (d) Damage done to patients by not incorporating their full identities in case conceptualizations or treatment modalities.

Lastly, this panel will include questions from the audience. We hope to have an engaging, provocative and timely conversation about the lack of actual discussion of diversity or cross-cultural issues in clinical treatment and research. More importantly, we aim to propose many effective ways of challenging these issues – from clinicians and researchers who frequently face them.