A Feasibility Trial of Mental Health First Aid First Nations: Acceptability,Cultural Adaptation,and Preliminary Outcomes

The Mental Health First Aid First Nations course was adapted from Mental Health First Aid Basic to create a community‐based, culturally safe and relevant approach to promoting mental health literacy in First Nations contexts. Over 2.5 days, the course aims to build community capacity by teaching individuals to recognize and respond to mental health crises. This feasibility trial utilized mixed methods to evaluate the acceptability, cultural adaptation, and preliminary effectiveness of MHFAFN. Our approach was grounded in community‐based participatory research principles, emphasizing relationship‐driven procedures to collecting data and choice for how participants shared their voices. Data included participant interviews (n = 89), and surveys (n = 91) from 10 groups in four provinces. Surveys contained open‐ended questions, retrospective pre‐post ratings, and a scenario. We utilized data from nine facilitator interviews and 24 facilitator implementation surveys. The different lines of evidence converged to highlight strong acceptability, mixed reactions to the cultural adaptation, and gains in participants’ knowledge, mental health first aid skill application, awareness, and self‐efficacy, and reductions in stigma beliefs. Beyond promoting individual gains, the course served as a community‐wide prevention approach by situating mental health in a colonial context and highlighting local resources and cultural strengths for promoting mental well‐being.     

Substance Use Research with Indigenous Communities: Exploring and Extending Foundational Principles of Community Psychology

Many Indigenous communities are concerned with substance use (SU) problems and eager to advance effective solutions for their prevention and treatment. Yet these communities also are concerned about the perpetuation of colonizing, disorder‐focused, stigmatizing approaches to mental health, and social narratives related to SU problems. Foundational principles of community psychology—ecological perspectives, empowerment, sociocultural competence, community inclusion and partnership, and reflective practice—provide useful frameworks for informing ethical community‐based research pertaining to SU problems conducted with and by Indigenous communities. These principles are explored and extended for Indigenous community contexts through themes generated from seven collaborative studies focused on understanding, preventing, and treating SU problems. These studies are generated from research teams working with Indigenous communities across the United States and Canada—inclusive of urban, rural, and reservation/reserve populations as well as adult and youth participants. Shared themes indicate that Indigenous SU research reflects community psychology principles, as an outgrowth of research agendas and processes that are increasingly guided by Indigenous communities. At the same time, this research challenges these principles in important ways pertaining to Indigenous–settler relations and Indigenous‐specific considerations. We discuss these challenges and recommend greater synergy between community psychology and Indigenous research.     

Natural and Ethical Normativity

In this paper, I argue that ethical normativity can be grounded in the natural normativity of organisms without being reducible to it. Michael Thompson and Philippa Foot both offer forms of neo‐Aristotelian ethical naturalism; I argue that both accounts have gaps that point toward the need for a constructive virtue ethics grounded in natural normativity. Similarly, Korsgaard's constructivist ethics ignores the ongoing relevance of natural norms in human ethical life. I thus offer an account according to which the self‐shaping activity of human organisms supplements and transforms natural normativity, giving rise to ethical norms. Such an account grounds human ethical distinctiveness in rationality without excluding nonrational humans from the ethical community. In the final section of the paper, I argue that ethical standards can be discovered (or hidden) through human activities, thus allowing for gradual progression (or regression) in ethical knowledge, both on individual and cultural levels.     

How Do Our Values Inform Ethical Research? A Narrative of Recognizing Colonizing Practices

How do you reconcile tensions between ethical research practice, personal values, and disciplinary values? This article focuses on an ethical challenge involving the engagement of rural Indigenous community members that emerged during my PhD fieldwork. The narrative illustrates the necessity to engage in critical reflexive research practice, a process which saw me respond to my own feelings of “wrong” and “right,” contemplate a distinction between procedural ethics and virtue ethics in community‐based research, explore colonizing research practices, and endeavor to reconcile an instance where the values of community psychology appeared in contest. The “voice” in this narrative is that of the first author; the dual authorship reflects the ongoing collaboration between both authors. When this ethical issue came about, our relationship was one of “student” and “supervisor”; we are now colleagues and friends.     

Exploring Community Mobilization in Northern Quebec: Motivators,Challenges, and Resilience in Action

Nunavimmiut (people of the land) are the Indigenous peoples of the northern peninsula of the province of Quebec. Communities of Nunavik and its regional organizations have been making concerted efforts in implementing community‐based strategies to support family wellbeing. These community strategies are grounded in many of the values underpinning community psychology: favoring empowerment‐oriented approaches, fostering community capacity, and transforming organizational cultures to allow for new modes of interaction, as well as new policies and practices that are grounded in community and culture. Despite the growing support and expectation for community mobilization, there is still very little research on the processes and challenges to such mobilization. In this study, we explored the unique challenges and facilitators to community endeavors in northern Quebec in order to better understand the complex dynamics and the strengths that Inuit build upon. We first used a focused ethnographic approach in the context of a 5‐year community mobilization project in Nunavik. We then conducted 12 individual interviews and two small group interviews with Inuit working on community‐based wellbeing‐oriented mobilization projects in four additional communities. Results expose how sociogeographical realities and colonialism influence the process of community mobilization. They also highlight the values and motivational factors that lead community members to move beyond these influences.     

Teacher Racism,Academic Self‐Concept,and Multiculturation: Investigating Adaptive and Maladaptive Relations With Academic Disengagement and Self‐Sabotage for Indigenous and Non‐Indigenous Australian Students

The issue of patterns of educational disengagement for Indigenous Australian students has long been of considerable concern within Indigenous education research. Although there is an expanding research base identifying factors that may increase (or decrease) the risk of disengagement for Indigenous students, little acknowledgement has been given to international research highlighting how stigma and discrimination may be associated with student disengagement and the resiliency factors that may nullify these associations. Utilising a sample of 1,376 (305 Indigenous; 1,071 non‐Indigenous) students from five New South Wales high schools in Australia, this study sought to examine the influence of academic self‐concept and two culturally sensitive constructs—specifically, perceived multiculturation (perceived cultural respect) and racial discrimination—on two disengagement‐orientated outcomes: affective disengagement and self‐sabotaging behaviour (behavioural disengagement) for both Indigenous and non‐Indigenous students. The findings showed relatively consistent direct and positive effects of academic self‐concept and direct negative effect of teacher racism for both groups of students. An interaction effect (discrimination × multiculturation) for the Indigenous students only was also identified, which suggested that the negative effects of racial discrimination on self‐sabotaging behaviour are exacerbated when the Indigenous students perceived higher levels of cultural respect from others. Overall, while these findings suggest that promoting higher levels of inter‐cultural respect may be beneficial for Indigenous and non‐Indigenous alike (e.g., culturally inclusive programmes), such positive perceptions may put Indigenous students at greater risk if the impact of racism is not also addressed. The implications of these findings suggest that cultural safety must be framed both in promoting the positive (cultural respect) and in eliminating the negative (racism).     

American Indian Researcher Perspectives on Qualitative Inquiry About and Within American Indian Communities

It is presumed that Indigenous researchers are optimally positioned to conduct research about or within their own or other Indigenous communities. However, these researchers may still experience challenges, barriers, and distressing events that are important to identify. Qualitative inquiry may be a particularly vulnerable context for Indigenous researchers given the nature of data collection methods and an emphasis on researcher–participant relationships. This paper details the personal reflections of two American Indian (AI) researchers who carried out qualitative research focused on AI issues and/or communities. The first project examined undergraduate students’ opinions of the use of AI imagery in the form of a race‐based university mascot. The second was a study of the mental health needs of AI youth and families in an urban community. Several themes characterized both of their experiences and might be generalizable to others working in these contexts: (a) coping with racism and microaggressions; (b) the role and impact of identity politics; (c) community insider/outsider tension; and (d) managing personal distress associated with the research topics and process. These themes are discussed to illuminate ways that Indigenous researchers, engaged in research on Indigenous topics and/or with Indigenous communities, are challenged and affected by their work.     

Collectivism and coping: Current theories,evidence, and measurements of collective coping

A burgeoning body of cultural coping research has begun to identify the prevalence and the functional importance of collective coping behaviors among culturally diverse populations in North America and internationally. These emerging findings are highly significant as they evidence culture's impacts on the stress‐coping process via collectivistic values and orientation. They provide a critical counterpoint to the prevailing Western, individualistic stress and coping paradigm. However, current research and understanding about collective coping appear to be piecemeal and not well integrated. To address this issue, this review attempts to comprehensively survey, summarize, and evaluate existing research related to collective coping and its implications for coping research with culturally diverse populations from multiple domains. Specifically, this paper reviews relevant research and knowledge on collective coping in terms of: (a) operational definitions; (b) theories; (c) empirical evidence based on studies of specific cultural groups and broad cultural values/dimensions; (d) measurements; and (e) implications for future cultural coping research. Overall, collective coping behaviors are conceived as a product of the communal/relational norms and values of a cultural group across studies. They also encompass a wide array of stress responses ranging from value‐driven to interpersonally based to culturally conditioned emotional/cognitive to religion‐ and spirituality‐grounded coping strategies. In addition, this review highlights: (a) the relevance and the potential of cultural coping theories to guide future collective coping research; (b) growing evidence for the prominence of collective coping behaviors particularly among Asian nationals, Asian Americans/Canadians and African Americans/Canadians; (c) preference for collective coping behaviors as a function of collectivism and interdependent cultural value and orientation; and (d) six cultural coping scales. This study brings to light the present theoretical and methodological contributions as well as limitations of this body of literature and the implications it holds for future coping research.     

Forbidden knowledge. A case study with commentaries exploring ethical issues and genetic research

This case is part of a series of case studies used as an exercise within a program on research ethics education. The case involves research on genetic birth defects in a culturally distinct, closed religious community in which elders speak for the community. The case raises ethical issues of informed consent in such a setting; of collaboration with the community; of conflicts between the researchers' responsibilities to the community as a whole and to individual subjects; of the impact of the researcher's findings on the practices and values of the community and issues regarding how the researchers share findings with subjects and how the findings are stored.     

An Insider’s Moments of Confucian Ethical Conflict: Reflexivity as the “Middle Way” Response

Cultural ethical dilemmas occur when ethical research practices, as prescribed by the research ethics codes of Western research institutions, conflict with the cultural and social norms of non-Western researchers and their participants. Thus, insider-researchers working with participants from similar cultural backgrounds may experience ethical dilemmas that result in disconcerting cultural estrangement from their communities. Using reflexive narratives, the author identifies moments of cultural ethical dilemmas that necessitate a choice between two competing sets of values. Working out of a Western university, the narratives reflect on cultural ethical dilemmas relating to non-coercion, confidentiality, and beneficence, encountered during interviews in the researcher’s community. Analyzed through the lens of Confucian social and ethical behavior, the paper asks whether there is a need for East–west polarization, or whether research ethics codes based on Western worldviews can be reconciled with Confucian worldviews. The paper suggests the “Middle Way” approach to reconciling and integrating the diverse worldviews of ethics, through the use of an ethical reflexive process that engenders trust in the research process and resolves cultural ethical dilemmas.     

Waimānalo Pono Research Hui: A Community–Academic Partnership to Promote Native Hawaiian Wellness through Culturally Grounded and Community‐Driven Research and Programming

Although Hawai‘i is often portrayed as an idyllic paradise and is recognized as one of the healthiest States in the United States, pervasive health disparities exist among Native Hawaiians. Similar to other indigenous populations across the globe, these disparities are linked to unjust social and economic policies rooted in colonization and historical trauma. Western‐centric efforts to address these disparities have yielded limited results. Consequently, indigenous frameworks to decolonize western‐centric research processes have emerged. The Waimānalo Pono Research Hui is an example of a community–academic partnership that uses indigenous methodologies and principles of community‐based participatory research as the foundation to engage Native Hawaiian community members in research. Monthly gatherings are held where community members and academic researchers share a meal and discuss community priorities with the goal of shaping research and programming that are rooted in Native Hawaiian values. A mission for the group has been created as well as protocols for community engagement to ensure all projects that work with the Waimānalo Pono Research Hui are ethically sound and grounded in the community's preferences, cultural knowledge, and lived experiences. Our community members continually report that the Waimānalo Pono Research Hui has positively transformed their perception of and willingness to engage in research. Similarly, university students and academic researchers express how much their knowledge about working with communities has grown and inspired them. Creating spaces for communities and researchers to build authentic relationships and engage in ongoing conversations can promote culturally grounded and community‐driven research and programming.     

Tools for a Cross‐Cultural Feminist Ethics: Exploring Ethical Contexts and Contents in the Makah Whale Hunt

Antiracist white feminists and ecofeminists have the tools but lack the strategies for responding to issues of social and environmental justice cross‐culturally, particularly in matters as complex as the Makah whale hunt. Distinguishing between ethical contexts and contents, I draw on feminist critiques of cultural essentialism, ecofeminist critiques of hunting and food consumption, and socialist feminist analyses of colonialism to develop antiracist feminist and ecofeminist strategies for cross‐cultural communication and cross‐cultural feminist ethics.     

Narrative Approaches to Organizational Development: A Case Study of Implementation of Collaborative Helping

Across North America, community agencies and state/provincial jurisdictions are embracing family‐centered approaches to service delivery that are grounded in strength‐based, culturally responsive, accountable partnerships with families. This article details a collaborative consultation process to initiate and sustain organizational change toward this effort. It draws on innovative ideas from narrative theory, organizational development, and implementation science to highlight a three component approach. This approach includes the use of appreciative inquiry focus groups to elicit existing best practices, the provision of clinical training, and ongoing coaching with practice leaders to build on those better moments and develop concrete practice frameworks, and leadership coaching and organizational consultation to develop organizational structures that institutionalize family‐centered practice. While the article uses a principle‐based practice framework, Collaborative Helping, to illustrate this process, the approach is applicable with a variety of clinical frameworks grounded in family‐centered values and principles.     

Assessing cognitive impairment in Indigenous Australians: Re‐evaluation of the Kimberley Indigenous Cognitive Assessment in Western Australia and the Northern Territory

The Kimberley Indigenous Cognitive Assessment (KICA) was initially developed and validated as a culturally appropriate dementia screening tool for older Indigenous people living in the Kimberley. This paper describes the re‐evaluation of the psychometric properties of the cognitive section (KICA‐Cog) of this tool in two different populations, including a Northern Territory sample, and a larger population‐based cohort from the Kimberley. In both populations, participants were evaluated on the KICA‐Cog tool, and independently assessed by expert clinical raters blinded to the KICA scores, to determine validity and reliability of dementia diagnosis for both groups. Community consultation, feedback and education were integral parts of the research. for the Northern Territory sample, 52 participants were selected primarily through health services. Sensitivity was 82.4% and specificity was 87.5% for diagnosis of dementia, with area under the curve (AUC) of .95, based on a cut‐off score of 31/32 of a possible 39. for the Kimberley sample, 363 participants from multiple communities formed part of a prevalence study of dementia. Sensitivity was 93.3% and specificity was 98.4% for a cut‐off score of 33/34, with AUC = .98 (95% confidence interval: 0.97–0.99). There was no education bias found. The KICA‐Cog appears to be most reliable at a cut‐off of 33/39.     

From Environmental to Ecological Ethics: Toward a Practical Ethics for Ecologists and Conservationists

Ecological research and conservation practice frequently raise difficult and varied ethical questions for scientific investigators and managers, including duties to public welfare, nonhuman individuals (i.e., animals and plants), populations, and ecosystems. The field of environmental ethics has contributed much to the understanding of general duties and values to nature, but it has not developed the resources to address the diverse and often unique practical concerns of ecological researchers and managers in the field, lab, and conservation facility. The emerging field of “ecological ethics” is a practical or scientific ethics that offers a superior approach to the ethical dilemmas of the ecologist and conservation manager. Even though ecological ethics necessarily draws from the principles and commitments of mainstream environmental ethics, it is normatively pluralistic, including as well the frameworks of animal, research, and professional ethics. It is also methodologically pragmatic, focused on the practical problems of researchers and managers and informed by these problems in turn. The ecological ethics model offers environmental scientists and practitioners a useful analytical tool for identifying, clarifying, and harmonizing values and positions in challenging ecological research and management situations. Just as bioethics provides a critical intellectual and problem-solving service to the biomedical community, ecological ethics can help inform and improve ethical decision making in the ecology and conservation communities.

Working in Indigenous Contexts: Self‐Reported Experiences of Non‐Indigenous Australian Psychologists

Despite assertions in the literature that psychologists adopt culturally inappropriate strategies for working with Indigenous clients, there is little empirical evidence about this. The aim of this study was to document the self‐reported experiences of non‐Indigenous psychologists working with Indigenous clients, the factors that they felt constrain these interactions, and the clinical, assessment and communication strategies they perceived as effective in Indigenous contexts. Structured interviews were held with 23 psychologists, 18 females and five males, with age groups ranging from 20–30 to 50+. Thematic analysis of the data revealed that participants experienced contradictions between the typical Western white psychologists' ways of interacting with clients, which they had been taught and the typical ways in which relationships are structured in Indigenous communities. The results suggest that the Western model of psychological training does not work very well in Indigenous contexts, and that psychologists working in Indigenous contexts have to work out their own methods on a trial‐and‐error basis. This points to the need for more systematic cultural competence training. However, there is a lack of research into the effectiveness of psychological intervention from the viewpoints of Indigenous clients themselves.     

Photography and Social Media Use in Community‐Based Participatory Research with Youth: Ethical Considerations

Community‐based participatory researchers increasingly incorporate photography and social media into their work. Despite its relative infancy, social media has created a powerful network that allows individuals to convey messages quickly to a widespread audience. In addition to its potential benefits, the use of social media in research also carries risk, given the fast pace of exchanges, sharing of personal images and ideas in high accessibility, low privacy contexts and continually shifting options and upgrades. This article contributes to the literature examining ethical considerations for photography and social media use in community‐based participatory research. We describe three key ethical dilemmas that we encountered during our participatory photography project with Latina/o youth: (a) use and content of images and risk; (b) incentives and coercion; and (c) social media activity and confidentiality. We provide our responses to these challenges, contextualized in theory and practice, and share lessons learned. We raise the question of how to contend with cultural shifts in boundaries and privacy. We propose that evaluating participant vulnerability versus potential empowerment may be more fitting than the standard approach of assessing risks and benefits. Finally, we recommend upholding the principles of participatory research by co‐producing ethical practices with one's participants.