Multicultural Care A Clinician's Guide to Cultural Competence

In today's increasingly diverse society, clinicians must provide appropriate and effective services when working with multicultural clients. Examining the role of context on our clients, ourselves, and our world is critical. In this book, Lillian Comas-Díaz offers a comprehensive, practical approach for enhancing your understanding of clients' contexts, developing a multicultural therapeutic relationship, and adapting your healing approach to your clients' needs. Each chapter demonstrates the application of cultural competence to a different aspect of clinical practice: self-awareness, assessment, engagement, treatment, psychopharmacology and testing, folk healing, and general multicultural consciousness. Ample clinical vignettes are provided, along with clear, easy-to-remember tools for integrating multicultural sensitivity into clinical practice. Importantly, the book draws on research and the APA Multicultural Guidelines to support the models and principles, which are illustrated with clinical material. This book is a must-read for all clinicians.

Lillian Comas-Díaz, PhD, is a clinical psychologist in full-time private practice and a clinical professor in the George Washington University Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. Previously, she was a faculty member of the Yale University Department of Psychiatry, where she also directed its Hispanic Clinic. The author of more than 100 publications, Dr. Comas-Díaz is the coeditor of Clinical Guidelines in Cross-Cultural Mental Health (with Ezra Griffith, 1988), Women of Color: Integrating Ethnic and Gender Identities in Psychotherapy (with Beverly Greene, 1994), WomanSoul: The Inner Life of Women's Spirituality (with Carole A. Rayburn, 2008), and Women Psychotherapists: Journeys in Healing (with Marcella Bakur Weiner, 2011). She is the founding editor of Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, the official journal of the Society for the Psychological Study of Ethnic Minorities Issues (Division 45 of APA). In addition, she serves on several editorial boards and is an associate editor of American Psychologist. Dr. Comas-Díaz is a past president of Psychologists in Independent Practice (Division 42 of APA) and former director of the APA Office of Ethnic Minority Affairs.