Course Description:
This course is based on a comprehensive report on Mental Health and Ethnicity published by the Office of the Surgeon General of the United States. This course provides therapists and healthcare professional with up to date information on the status of, needs for, availability of and outcomes of mental health services for African Americans. It is a wonderful course for cross cultural training as it provides factual information regarding the mental health needs of a rarely studied population. This course is designed for both clinicians and administrators who work in both private and public, and urban and rural areas.

Psychologists, social workers, mental health counselors and marriage and family therapists can benefit from this course. This course may also be helpful for other practitioners, such as midwives and dieticians and nutritionist who work with a diverse client base.  This course is appropriate for beginning, intermediate and advanced level practitioners who wish to improve their skills in the area of multiculturalism.

Author: Surgeon General of the United States

Learning Objectives:  This course will provide a professional with information about mental health care for African Americans. Specifically, a professional will:

• Demonstrate knowledge of the need for mental health services, including key issues in understanding research, mental disorders in adults, children and the elderly within the African American population
• Display an understanding of the specific mental health problems of African Americans, including somatization, culture-bound syndromes and information regarding high-need groups within this population
• Demonstrate knowledge of the availability, accessibility and utilization of mental health services as well as the appropriateness and the outcomes of services for the African American population

Citation: Surgeon General of United States (2001). Mental Health Care for African Americans, Mental Health: Culture, Race and Ethnicity. A Report of the Surgeon General.   Updates added by DiDona, T.M. (2018). From sources in NAMI – with additional references added

Reviewed by TM DiDona, PhD 2018 and found to be current.  Updated references include:

• Avila, J., Chelvakumar, G., & Ford, N. (2017). Gender and Sexual Minorities Cultural Competency Training for Pediatric Residents. Journal of Adolescent Health, 60(2), S87.
• Betancourt, J. R., Green, A. R., Carrillo, J. E., & Owusu Ananeh-Firempong, I. I. (2016). Defining cultural competence: a practical framework for addressing racial/ethnic disparities in health and health care. Public health reports.
• Bleidorn, W., Arslan, R. C., Denissen, J. J., Rentfrow, P. J., Gebauer, J. E., Potter, J., & Gosling, S. D. (2016). Age and gender differences in self-esteem—A cross-cultural window. Journal of personality and social psychology, 111(3), 396.
• Donaldson, W. V., & Vacha-Haase, T. (2016). Exploring staff clinical knowledge and practice with LGBT residents in long-term care: A grounded theory of cultural competency and training needs. Clinical Gerontologist, 39(5), 389-409.
• Rosenkrantz, D. E., Black, W. W., Abreu, R. L., Aleshire, M. E., & Fallin-Bennett, K. (2017). Health and health care of rural sexual and gender minorities: A systematic review. Stigma and Health, 2(3), 229.

Tan, J. Y., Xu, L. J., Lopez, F. Y., Jia, J. L., Pho, M. T., Kim, K. E., & Chin, M. H. (2016). Shared decision making among clinicians and Asian American and Pacific Islander sexual and gender minorities: An intersectional approach to address a critical care gap. LGBT health, 3(5), 327-334.