Society for the Psychological Study of Ethnic Minority Issues

Division 45 of the American Psychological Association (APA) is the Society for the Psychological Study of Ethnic Minority Issues. It is open to anyone who is interested in ethnic minority issues. It was founded in 1986, in response to ethnic minority psychologists' concerns that other divisions of the APA were not adequately responding to the need for systematic investigation of ethnic minority concerns and issues.

During his 1996 to 1997 term as president of Division 45, Guillermo Bernal began a process for the division to sponsor a journal to serve as a scientific outlet for multicultural issues in psychology. This eventually became a reality in 1999, as a preexisting journal, Cultural Diversity and Mental Health, edited by division member Lillian Comas-Díaz, was acquired by the division and renamed Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology. While this is a divisional journal, it falls under the umbrella of the APA, which provides it with the prestige that comes with APA sponsorship. Topics covered by the journal have included research and theory on HIV risks in adolescence, measures and mental health correlates of acculturation, bicultural stress, and within-culture and within-person resiliency factors. Besides publishing feature articles, research reports, and brief reports, the journal publishes special issues, such as HIV and ethnic minority populations, guest edited by Gail Wyatt, in 1999; Asian American acculturation, guest edited by Gayle Iwamasa and Ann Yamada, in 2001; and the National Multicultural Conference and Summit II, guest edited by Melba J. T. Vasquez, Rosie Phillips Bingham, Steven James, Lisa Porché-Burke, and Derald Wing Sue, in 2002.

Perceiving a need for systematic dissemination of information about ethnic minority populations, Bernal, Trimble, Burlew, and Leong (2003) edited a book for the division, Handbook of Racial and Ethnic Minority Psychology, with 32 chapters from 63 of the leading psychologists in the field. These chapters cover a wide range of topics, including the history of ethnic minority psychology, multicultural graduate training, teaching, culturally valid research methods, infant mental health in African American families, the effects of youth violence on minority youth development, substance abuse prevention in minority populations, and psychological adjustment and clinical interventions for minority adults. This handbook can be used as a graduate textbook for courses in multicultural psychology or as a resource for those involved in multicultural research and practice.

Because many ethnic minority psychologists have been concerned that ethnic minority clients may be treated by those unfamiliar with important issues in ethnic minority psychology, Division 17, the Society for Counseling Psychology, and Division 45 have worked on a set of guidelines for multiculturalism counseling. The actual inception of this formal process began with the publication of a landmark article by Sue et al. (1982) on cross-cultural competencies of psychologists, followed by further refinements by Sue, Arredondo, and McDavis (1992) and Sue et al. (1998). The final guidelines, Guidelines for Multicultural Counseling Proficiency for Psychologists, were adopted by the APA in August of 2002, published in the APA's flagship journal, the American Psychologist (APA, 2003), and appear on both the Division 45 Web site (http://www.apa.org/divisions/div45/homepage.html) and the APA's Public Interest Directorate's Web site (http://www.apa.org/pi).

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