Aboriginal Practitioners Offer Culturally Safe and Responsive CBT: Response to Commentaries

We appreciate the valuable commentaries that have been provided for our paper “Can CBT be effective for Aboriginal Australians? Perspectives of Aboriginal practitioners trained in CBT.” The international authors identify how CBT, with adaptations by culturally responsive practitioners can be of value for non‐Western and Indigenous peoples. The commentary by Australian psychologists Dudgeon and Kelly questions the value of CBT for Indigenous Australians, terming it a “Western therapy” that is “culturally unresponsive” and “culturally blind.” They also critique the methodology of the study. We argue that CBT can be adapted by culturally competent practitioners to be culturally safe in Australia, as elsewhere. Cultural safety is mostly a function of the therapist, not the therapy. In the Bennett‐Levy et al. (2014) study, CBT was delivered in a culturally responsive way by Aboriginal counsellors within their own communities. CBT is a particularly adaptable and versatile therapy, and embodies principles of empowerment and self‐determination that are central to Indigenous social and emotional well‐being. We are concerned that CBT, which has strong empirical support and has been adapted elsewhere for a range of cultures, including Indigenous cultures, may be being denied to Indigenous Australian clients. There is considerable opportunity to evaluate the effectiveness and versatility of CBT, and variations of its mode of delivery, for all Australians.     

Stereotype change and prejudice reduction: short‐ and long‐term evaluation of a cross–cultural awareness programme

The present study reports an evaluation of an applied prejudice reduction intervention. Previous research has indicated that such programmes achieve limited success. The programme evaluated was an in‐house anti‐racist education programme aimed at reducing prejudice towards Aboriginal Australians. The target audience were employees of a large public service organization. Knowledge of, prejudice towards, and stereotyping of Aboriginal Australians were assessed before commencing the programme to establish a baseline. Changes in these variables were assessed immediately after completing the programme, and again 3 months after completing the programme. The programme had pronounced effects immediately after completion: there was a significant increase in knowledge and significant decrease in prejudice and negative stereotyping. However, 3 months later, there was no significant difference to baseline levels of prejudice and stereotyping. Knowledge remained significantly higher than at baseline 3 months after completing the programme. High prejudice participants alone experienced a significant, long‐term decrease in old‐fashioned racism. It is concluded that further research must be done to develop more successful strategies of prejudice reduction and stereotype change that are also applicable to ‘real world’ contexts. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Ubiquity of Whiteness in majority group national imagination: Australian = White,but New Zealander does not

This research examined cross‐national differences in the extent to which majority ethnic group members (White Europeans) in Australia and New Zealand automatically privileged members of their ingroup, relative to Indigenous targets, in cognitive representations of nationhood. As predicted, European Australian undergraduates implicitly associated their own ethnic group with the concept of “Australian”, relative to Aboriginal Australian targets (N = 50), but the implicit preferencing of Whiteness in representations of nationhood (relative to Maori targets) was absent in a comparable sample of New Zealand European undergraduates (N = 50). These results indicate that the extent to which representations of minority groups are interwoven with non‐conscious cognitive representations of nationhood and national identity are not immutably fixed. Instead, it is argued that this cross‐national difference is due to underlying systemic differences in the extent to which symbolic markers of Indigenous culture, identity, and values are consensually represented in majority group (White) national culture.     

多元文化论与跨文化心理学的发展

多元文化论强调文化因素对心理学研究的重要性。它主张文化的多元性和平等性,反对跨文化心理学研究中的“文化帝国主义”倾向。在多元文化论的影响下,跨文化心理学开始摆脱“欧美中心主义”偏见,出现了普遍性研究策略和特殊性研究策略相结合、跨文化心理学与文化心理学、本土心理学相结合的趋向。     

Why Clinical Psychology Needs to Engage in Community‐Based Approaches to Mental Health

The aim of this article is to advocate for clinical psychology to engage with community‐based approaches to mental health. This engagement will be challenging given community work is antithetical to the individualism that defines much of clinical psychology. It would also result in a direct challenge to the core tenets of our profession, including an emphasis on individualism, psychopathology, and expert‐driven intervention. We need clinical psychology, however, to decolonise itself to respond to the needs of Aboriginal communities and those from non‐Western collectivist cultures. We also need clinical psychology to consider the sociopolitics of human distress and lend itself to social action for complex problems. Specific examples of community‐based practices will be provided, focusing specifically on those that relate to mental health. Implication for the reform of research methodologies and classroom pedagogies will also be discussed.     

Can CBT Be Effective for Aboriginal Australians? Perspectives of Aboriginal Practitioners Trained in CBT

The objective of the study was to investigate whether high and low intensity versions of cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) might be an effective therapeutic approach for enhancing the mental health of Aboriginal Australians. Five university‐educated Aboriginal counsellors received in‐depth training in CBT. Over the following year, they used CBT strategies with their clients, and met 10 times as a participatory action research group. The group addressed three key questions: (a) Does CBT appear to be useful for Aboriginal Australians? (b) If so, what elements of CBT are perceived to be effective? (c) What adaptations might be made to CBT to enhance its effectiveness with Aboriginal Australians? The resulting qualitative data were transcribed and analysed. Counsellors perceived CBT to be very useful for their Aboriginal clients and for themselves. They reported that it enhanced their clients' well‐being, their own clinical skills, and their own well‐being, and it reduced burnout. The qualities of CBT that were perceived to be effective were its adaptability, pragmatic here‐and‐now approach, capacity for low‐intensity interventions, safe containing structure, promotion of self‐agency, and valuable techniques. It was suggested that the prime requirement for adaptations to CBT were that they would need to fit different social and cultural contexts.     

Developing Praxis: Mobilising Critical Race Theory in Community Cultural Development

Race remains a significant issue in the lives of many people in Australia. For example, Indigenous Australians lives continue to be marked by social and economic disadvantage and everyday experiences of exclusion. Within this context, the Community Arts Network Western Australia promote social change and the empowerment of Indigenous groups through community cultural development. With an emphasis on community strengths and resources, community arts practice is employed to create, promote, and improve opportunities for participation, network development and empowerment. In this article, we explore these projects from a community psychology orientation, which is committed to developing opportunities for inclusion and also exposing the workings of power in everyday settings. Although there have been many positive outcomes that have resulted from the different activities with communities, there have also been significant barriers to transformative practice, in particular, issues of racialisation and continuing colonisation. We discuss our efforts aimed at understanding racism, which have included engaging with critical race theory and whiteness studies within the context of Indigenous and non‐Indigenous partnerships for change. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Multicultural Training Experiences as Predictors of Psychology Students' Cultural Competence

The psychologists in the western world, including Australia, are required to be culturally competent because of the cultural diversity of these societies. Previous studies conducted in North America and Europe have found multicultural teaching, clinical experience with culturally diverse clients, and discussion of multicultural counselling issues in supervision to be related to the practitioner's cultural competency. The present study examined factors contributing to trainee psychologists' perceived level of cultural competence. It was hypothesised that multicultural teaching, clinical experience, and supervision would be related to students' level of cultural competence. One hundred twenty‐seven postgraduate clinical psychology students completed an online survey battery that included demographic information, a social desirability measure, and the Multicultural Mental Health Awareness Scale. This hypothesis was partially supported. Clinical experience and supervision focusing on multicultural issues were found to be related to participants' perceived cultural competence; however, multicultural teaching was not. These results provide insight into how universities around Australia can facilitate future psychologists' competence in working with clients from different cultural backgrounds.     

Moving beyond the enduring dominance of positivism in psychological research: Implications for psychology in Australia

Almost since its inception, the dominant narrative of modern psychology has embraced positivism through its insistence that psychological science is objective, generalisable, and value free (or neutral). Consequently, quantitative research and, in particular, experimental designs, are privileged over other forms of enquiry, and other epistemologies, methodologies, and methods remain marginalised within the discipline. We argue that the enduring hegemony of positivism needs to be opposed to enable psychology to genuinely understand the antecedents of, and provide meaningful sustainable solutions for, complex human issues without being constrained by a narrow focus on method. We discuss the ways in which psychology in Australia can move towards embracing a constructionist epistemology that provides the framework for methodological pluralism. We provide a number of suggestions for change across the interrelated areas of accreditation, curriculum, the Australian Psychological Society, and research.     

Minority report: Social identity,cognitions of rejection and intergroup anxiety predicting prejudice from one racially marginalized group towards another

The present study investigated the attitudes of one disadvantaged minority group in Australia, Asian Australians (N = 87), towards another more severely disadvantaged minority group, Aboriginal Australians. Asian Australian attitudes were compared to European Australian attitudes (N = 273). Cognitions of outgroup rejection, identification and intergroup anxiety were assessed in relation modern racism, desire for intergroup avoidance and support for a national apology. Both Asian and European participants who perceived Aboriginal Australians as rejecting were more likely to express intergroup anxiety. Anxiety mediated the relationship between cognitions of rejection and the dependent variables. Whilst there was a direct positive relationship between European Australian identification and prejudice, for Asian Australian participants, identification moderated the relationship between cognitions of rejection and the dependent variables. Highly identified Asian Australian participants were particularly sensitive to cognitions of rejection, which increased modern racism and avoidance and lowered political support. The pattern was reversed for low identifiers, who were more likely to endorse a national apology to Aboriginal Australians when they perceived Aboriginal Australians as rejecting. The role of perceived rejection in predicting prejudice and avoidance, and the moderating role of Asian Australian identification, are both discussed. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

How to Cook Rice: A Review of Ingredients for Teaching anti‐Prejudice

There is a pressing need to address prejudice, racism, and discrimination against marginalised groups in Australia. This involves change from the structural to the individual level. In this article, we discuss the merits of individual anti‐prejudice mechanisms within the Australian context. First, we expand on nine mechanisms described in a previous paper and then review five new mechanisms. We conclude that while some mechanisms are likely to be useful regardless of location, others need to be tailored to the local context. We also conclude that effective interventions need to utilise multiple mechanisms. It is hoped that the synthesis of the different mechanisms provided here will assist anti‐prejudice researchers, practitioners, and policymakers striving to improve relations among different groups in our society.     

A Systematic Review: Non‐Suicidal Self‐injury in Australia and New Zealand's Indigenous Populations

Objective

To undertake a systematic review of non‐suicidal self‐injury (NSSI) prevalence, patterns, functions, and behavioural correlates for the Indigenous populations of Australia (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders) and New Zealand (NZ; Maori).

Method

We searched the following electronic databases: PubMed, MedLine, Scopus, Web of Science, ScienceDirect, PsycInfo, and PsycArticles, CINAHL, and the Informit Health and Indigenous Peoples collections. Studies were included for review if they were published within the last 25 years and reported on NSSI in Australia and NZ's Indigenous populations.

Results

Seven studies were included, six of which came from Australia. The prevalence of NSSI in Australia ranged from 0.9% up to 22.50%; statistics varied by the different samples, types of prevalence, and relationship to alcohol. Several studies found that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples had higher rates of NSSI than other Australians, but that this was not significantly higher. Two studies indicated that NSSI was linked to alcohol use, incarceration, and a younger age. The one NZ study was of injury and not specifically NSSI.

Conclusions

Findings are limited due to a small pool of literature. Cultural variations in NSSI presentation should be considered when working with Indigenous populations. Further research is required to help determine what cultural variations may exist.     

Possible research area bias in the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) draft journal rankings

An analysis of the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) draft rankings of 661 psychology journals points to systematic differences between research areas in the distribution of ranks. Journals in experimental, biological and neuroscientific psychology obtained higher mean ranks, consistent with a tendency for “hard‐science” areas to have higher bibliometric journal impact. The ERA will influence the distribution of resources and rewards within psychology and create powerful incentives for institutions and researchers, so differences in ranks across research areas may alter the shape of the discipline. Although they do not necessarily imply bias, such differences raise the possibility that psychology researchers will not operate on a level playing field.     

Attitudes toward Indigenous Australians: the role of empathy and guilt

Previous research in Perth, Western Australia, finds a disturbing amount of prejudice against Indigenous Australians. At the forefront of much prejudice research has been the distinction between old‐fashioned and modern prejudice. We constructed an Attitude Toward Indigenous Australians scale from items originating from qualitative data. We found that negative attitudes were predicted by collective guilt about past and present wrongs to Indigenous Australians (collective guilt directly linked to Indigenous issues, as well as collective guilt generally). Negative attitudes were also predicted by a lack of empathy for Indigenous Australians, and affective perspective taking generally. Socio‐demographics (e.g. a lack of education) predicted negative attitudes, which indicate the necessity of taking both social‐psychological and socio‐demographic factors into account when examining the nature of prejudice. A number of practical implications arise from these findings. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Admissions of racism in discourse on migration in Greece: Beyond the norm against prejudice?

The turn to language in social psychology is closely related to the study of prejudice as racist discourse has been the subject matter of some of the ground‐breaking discourse analytic work. A widely accepted argument was that there seems to be a norm against prejudice informing Western societies: people commonly engage in denials of prejudice when they make negative comments about minorities. Recent work has argued that, due to ideological shifts in the wider societal context or because denying prejudice may not be people's only rhetorical concern, it is possible to find people admitting prejudice. We examine how people in Greece, Greek majority and immigrants, formulate admissions of racism in interviews on migration and citizenship in Greece. Drawing on Ideological Dilemmas and Critical Discursive Social Psychology, we argue that these admissions ironically operate within the norm against prejudice and discuss our findings in relation to the wider socio‐political Greek context.     

Comment on “The Self‐Care of Psychologists and Mental Health Professionals” (Dattilio, 2015)

Professor Frank Dattilio's article “The Self‐care of Psychologists and Mental Health Professionals” provides an overview of stress and related mental health problems among psychologists, and a proposition that psychologists are not vigilant in regard to self‐care. Dattilio offers a range of self‐care strategies and recommendations, and highlights self‐care practices within various psychology frameworks, and concludes with some “healthy tips” for managing stress. In my commentary I underscore Dattilio's message that self‐care is of critical importance in psychology practice, given the responsibility of caring for others inherent in the work psychologists undertake. However, I raise additional points of consideration and suggest an alternative approach to addressing the self‐care needs of the profession. My commentary makes the following points: (a) the need to distinguish between psychology trainees and practising qualified psychologists when addressing stress and self‐care requirements in the profession; (b) the importance of developing a culture of self‐care among psychologists by providing self‐care instruction during training; (c) the need to temper research findings on stress and mental health among psychologists by the methodological weakness of the studies in this area; (d) adhering to the recent call from colleagues to shift from a focus on pathology and punishment to a positive acceptance, mindfulness, and values‐based approach for encouraging self‐care among psychologists; (e) the use of a systematic framework for organising the presentation of self‐care strategies that makes them more accessible; and (f) an appeal to professional bodies to take their responsibility in promoting self‐care in the profession.     

Prejudice Against Muslim Australians: The Role of Values,Gender and Consensus

Data from an Australian community survey (n = 189) examining the predictors of prejudice against Muslim Australians were analysed. Using thematic analysis, we investigated the specific values our participants reported regarding their perceptions of Muslim Australians and Islam. We then investigated the relationship between prejudice against Muslim Australians, the most important value priorities given by our participants, and other prejudice‐related variables. After entry into a regression analysis, the participants high in prejudice were found to be significantly more likely to have lower educational levels and more right‐wing views. They were also significantly more likely to report high levels of national attitudes (i.e. stronger identification with Australian identity), concern about gender equality within the Muslim community, less concern about equality generally and report that Muslims were not conforming to Australian values. High prejudiced participants also scored higher in the reporting of negative media‐related beliefs, were more likely to perceive higher support in the community for their views than was the case and were more negative towards Muslim men than Muslim women. The implications for anti‐prejudice interventions are discussed. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

从跨文化心理学到文化建构主义心理学——心理学中文化意识的衍变

心理学中的文化意识在跨文化心理学、文化心理学、文化建构主义心理学中经历了3次重大衍变。跨文化心理学视文化为心理规律的干扰因素,认为理论研究应力求“去文化”;文化心理学认为心理是文化的“投射”,寻求理论的“文化敏感”;文化建构主义心理学则认为心理与文化是相互灌注、相互建构的关系,因而更加关注“心理”、“意义”与“现实”的双向建构过程。本文详细分析了上述几种不同的文化意识形态的主要特点,并结合历史背景,对其各自的意义、问题做了简要讨论。     

The sociocultural movement in psychology,the role of theories in sociocultural inquiries,and the theory of sociocultural models

This special issue presents the theory of sociocultural models (TSCM) and its applications in diverse areas of psychology, including education, health care, clinical practice, gender relations, and general research. As many theories already exist in the social sciences, some readers may ask: “Why do cross‐cultural, cultural, and indigenous psychologists need another theory?” This question is comprised of two aspects: culture/cultural and theory/theoretical. Therefore, to answer it, it is important to clarify both issues. The first relates to cultural and its relation to psychological. The second, theory, considers its relation to cultural and psychological. These issues have long‐range implications for all culture and psychology disciplines as they pose many questions: What role does culture play in the mental functioning of people? How is culture constituted? Is cultural related to social? Does people’s mental functioning exert reciprocal influences on their cultural and social functioning? While working toward answering these questions, researchers quickly determine that more questions arise: What role should theories play in answering these questions? What constitutes theory in culture and psychology disciplines? How should such a theory (or such theories) address the triad of cultural, social, and mental? Consequently, in an effort to provide an overview of the TSCM and to begin to answer these questions, this introduction consists of two parts. The first part addresses the sociocultural turn in modern psychology; this part discusses its implications for research in culture and psychology disciplines. The second segment examines the topic of the theoretical backgrounds of cultural and cross‐cultural research and connects the philosophical paradigms of interpretivism and realism with the theory of sociocultural models. This introduction concludes with a brief overview of the articles included in this issue.