Transforming Careers in Mental Health for BIPOC

Lillian Comas-Díaz, PhD

Clinical Professor, George Washington University Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, and Author, Multicultural Care, A Clinician’s Guide to Cultural Competence

Bravo! This book is a powerful instrument for improving mental health. The contributors teach you how to navigate, resist, and change mental health institutions and policies. I highly recommend this outstanding book to educators, practitioners, researchers, students, and to members of the public interested in mental health.

Ramona Denby-Brinson, PhD, ACSW, LMSW

Dean and Professor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Social Work

The time is right for this truth-driven, liberating book that guides readers in an exploration of race-related clinical, research, and leadership struggles that many BIPOC individuals experience. This interdisciplinary group of renown scholars ingeniously frame the issues, reminding all of the collective strength of BIPOC populations. This anthology has something for everyone.

Roberto Lewis-Fernández, MD, MTS

Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Columbia University, Director of the New York State Center of Excellence for Cultural Competence and the Hispanic Treatment Program, Research Area Leader for Anxiety, Mood, Eating, and Related Disorders at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, and editor of the DSM-5 Handbook on the Cultural Formulation Interview

An invaluable guide for anyone considering a career in behavioral health, confronting discrimination in their discipline or workplace, or seeking a more inclusive society. Personal histories, thoughtful reflections, and practical suggestions provide useful options for how to thrive in unfair systems. Covers diverse career-development stages, positionality combinations, and behavioral health disciplines.

Helen H. Hsu, PsyD

President, American Psychological Association Division 45 (Society for the Study of Race, Culture, and Ethnicity) and Director of Outreach, Stanford University Counseling and Psychological Services

This book compiles the wisdom of esteemed leaders, healers, and ground-breaking scholars who understand firsthand the barriers and the values that graduate students and early career professionals must balance and address to evolve our respective fields. The authors provide a wealth of mentorship and guidance essential for social work and psychology.

Rosa M. Gil, DSW

President & CEO, Comunilife Inc.

Important and timely. Drs. Lausell Bryant and Chang takes us on a journey to learn from the experience of racial and ethnic professionals about how to navigate and change the exclusionary and repressive effects of white academic institutions, policies, and health and human services delivery systems. It is a call for a larger praxis of social change and transformation of the very conditions that promote such a state of affairs.

Gayle Skawen Morse, PhD

Professor and Licensed Psychologist and editor, Applying Multiculturalism: An Ecological Approach to the APA Guidelines and Understanding Indigenous Perspectives: Visions, Dreams, and Hallucinations

Drs. Chang and Bryant have given us a brilliant book that provides a rare opportunity to learn from some of the most influential scholars of our time. The authors merge rigorous research and their lived experiences to give us a timely view of multiculturalism in action. A truly joyful read!

Steve Burghardt, MSW, PhD

Professor of Social Work, Silberman School of Social Work – Hunter College, CUNY

Transforming Careers in Mental Health for BIPOC is an inspiring and infuriating book. Inspiring, as a wide-ranging number of highly successful BIPOC leaders and academics tell their stories of struggle, perseverance, and triumph with humbling insight and hard-earned wisdom that so many others can learn from. And, yes, infuriating because after 40 years of various calls for more diversity, equity, and inclusion, the underlying systems of oppression and marginalization in higher education and human services remain almost unchanged. Anyone who thinks otherwise needs to read this book. Maybe twice.

Debra M. Kawahara, PhD

Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and Distinguished Professor, California School of Professional Psychology, Editor-in-Chief of Women & Therapy and Executive Director of the Illumination of Mindfulness Institute

Dr. Doris F. Chang and Dr. Linda Lausell Bryant have gathered a distinguished group of BIPOC scholars to provide advice and their personal experiences on how to navigate, resist, and transform mental health systems, policies, and organizations. This book gives strategies for transformational change and healing at a systems level.

Kamilah Majied, PhD, LCSW

Author of Joyfully Just: Black Wisdom and Buddhist Insights for Liberated Living; Professor of Social Work at California State University, Monterey Bay, mental health therapist, contemplative inclusivity and equity consultant

Transforming Careers in Mental Health for BIPOC offers revolutionary insights from leading BIPOC clinicians, administrators, and educators on how to transform mental health practice, policy, and education as well as the academy itself, demonstrating how we can all build careers that are fulfilling and liberating. With heartfelt reflections from innovators who have learned through their own courageous and often painful experiences, this is a veritable guidebook for generations of BIPOC scholars to come and an inspiring resource for creating justice in healing and education.

Vincent Guilamo-Ramos, PhD, MPH, LCSW, PMHNP-BC

Director of the Institute for Policy Solutions, Johns Hopkins School of Nursing

The clinical expertise and organizational and lived experiences of the BIPOC authors described in this unique text represents an undeniable opportunity to advance the delivery of behavioral health services in the United States.