Implicit Bias and Mental Health Professionals:

Courtney Lamb LMSW, C. Curtis Holmes Ph.D.

Description

As mental health professionals working at a child advocacy center (CAC), both authors have experienced and researched issues that impact each professional field, which makes up the multidisciplinary team (MDT). These fields primarily include mental health professionals of children, school counselors and school social workers, forensic interviewers, child and family advocates, sexual assault nurse examiners, CAC administrators, Child Protective Service investigators, law enforcement investigators, prosecutors and other attorneys, and judges. Even mental health professionals of children who never intended to specialize in the CAC world will inevitably be working with numerous clients with a trauma and abuse history. Therefore, it is best if all mental health professionals of children become more aware of the CAC world, of the workings of MDTs and of a greater understanding of systems, and of implicit bias that influence thinking, recommendations, and professional behavior with cases of child abuse.

Sujets

• Medical
• Mental (serie de televisión)
• Reference
• Medicine
• Research
• Mental
• Bias

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris US
• Date de parution: 05 juin 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669872023
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Implicit Bias and Mental Health Professionals:
Creating Better Understanding for Systems of Child Abuse Professionals
C. Curtis Holmes, Ph.D. & Courtney Lamb, LMSW

 
 
Copyright © 2023 by C. Curtis Holmes, Ph.D. & Courtney Lamb, LMSW.
Library of Congress Control Number:
2023910244
ISBN:
Hardcover
978-1-6698-7204-7
 
Softcover
978-1-6698-7203-0
 
eBook
978-1-6698-7202-3
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
 
 
 
 
Rev. date: 06/01/2023
 
 
 
 
Xlibris
844-714-8691
www.Xlibris.com
 
849760
Contents
Reviews
 
Chapter 1 The Big Picture
Chapter 2 Systems Thoughts
Chapter 3 Systems Influencing Mental Health Professionals, Child Advocacy Centers, and Multidisciplinary Teams
Chapter 4 How Can Understanding Behavioral Dynamics Help?
Chapter 5 Specific Ways Implicit Bias Affects All Professionals on the MDT
Chapter 6 Practical Ways for Agencies to Reduce Implicit Bias
Chapter 7 Practical Ways for Individual Professionals to Reduce Implicit Bias
Chapter 8 Practical Ways for Professionals to Prevent Secondary Traumatization Leading to Dropping Out or Having Performance Issues
Reviews
This book is a good read. In it, you can find many references to as well as timely examples of applied behavioral dynamics by reviewing many approaches to implicit bias—including some of the concepts used by many of those affiliated with the Fore(In)Sight Foundation.
Efforts are directed at enabling each person, including mental health professionals, to understand his or her basic potentials, as related to pertinent environmental factors, and the optimal education, vocations, marriage, morality beliefs, and use of time relevant to these potentials. To this end, Fore(In)Sight conveys ideas designed to reduce preventable pain, suffering, and death in the world, particularly that which is due to nonphysical causes that we refer to as being behavioral . We can perceive the production of positive behavior and the prevention of negative behavior to be intimately related, in that these involve behaviors, particularly those which are due to nonphysical causes.
Sandra C. Lewis, PhD
President
Fore(In)Sight Foundation

 
 
 
For many years and in many areas of work, I have found cultural competency and bias (explicit and implicit) to be hugely important topics to understand and explore within oneself—more specifically throughout my almost forty years of psychological practice, annual courses I’ve taken pertaining to this topic, and fifteen years of teaching doctoral level psychology interns on cultural competency with the Native American population. Thus, I appreciate the methodical manner in which Curt Holmes, PhD, and Courtney Lamb, LMSW, have approached the multifaceted problem of implicit bias. Their work serves as a training tool and a go-to reference resource.
The book takes system thought (on the micro, mezzo, and macro levels, Chapter 2) and delineates its influence on individuals and mental health professionals, child advocacy centers, and multidisciplinary teams (MDTs) as it relates to adverse childhood experiences (Chapter 3). In Chapter 4, Dr. Holmes reviews how understanding behavioral dynamics allows individuals to make the needed changes to recognize and alter their responses.
The fifth chapter, “Specific Ways Implicit Bias Affects All Professionals on the MDT,” is a challenging self-discovery. The next chapters, “Practical Ways for Agencies to Reduce Implicit Bias” and “Practical Ways for Individual Professionals to Reduce Implicit Bias,” outline actionable ways in which centers and professionals can work toward altering prejudices and bias. Dr. Holmes and Courtney Lamb’s approach is a “no blame and shame” and is very uplifting. I so appreciate their encouragement to accept and own whatever our current knowledge is while valuing our training and seeking new knowledge to build greater competency and reduce implicit bias.
The last chapter, “ Practical Ways for Professionals to Prevent Secondary Traumatization Leading to Dropping Out or Having Performance Issues,” is beneficial for every member of the MDT. It also points out the need to function as a team that is concerned for its participants. Examples include a law enforcement officer sharing his chronic recurrent nightmares of dredging and finding the child’s body and a Child Protective Service worker sharing her burnout from the deluge of investigations on the front line.
Sara McArthur, PhD, ABPP
Child Psychologist at a CAC

 
 
 
Dr. Holmes, thank you for the opportunity of sharing your years of excellent research through your work with various children, parents, families, and agencies. Your years of private practice as a psychologist, as a “Train a Trainer” and developing programs for abused children, and as a published author are well-known. As a female African American licensed marriage and family therapist in private practice, I recall meeting you in the early 1990s and how explicitly excited I was to be a part of the multidisciplinary team (MDT) with you, which included the Houston County, Georgia Family Connection Program (which was part of the clinical mental health program), our local juvenile judge, investigation team, our unique “Rainbow House” CAC, and others who were working for the good of abused children. With you being one of the founders of our local MDT, it was a wonderful experience to watch you expose each discipline’s role to make a cohesive unit and put your own beliefs or biases aside and focus on the children and the families. For example, my own implicit biases caused me to have fears of counseling Caucasian males, especially if they had a military background. However, looking my implicit biases in the face and explicitly expressing my fears led to an evolution of becoming a seasoned African American therapist who was able to build a practice that continues to be very diverse. I have been honored to be a part of one of the most diverse and well-learned team members led by you dealing with various mental health issues, especially problematic sexual behavior (PSB) as it relates to sexual abuse of young children and their families.
Dr. Holmes’ and coauthor LMSW Courtney Lamb’s masterful book is easy reading and well organized and provided good research to back their positions to help the whole MDT. It is also not just a clinical position, but it is for all team members—caseworkers, guardians ad litem, police officers, etc. It showed the importance of all members being willing to share their views/needs through their own field and/or personal lenses. Each MDT member needs to ask, am I saying this because of my own explicit or implicit personal feelings vs. seeking appropriate methods and tools to help the child and family? A healthy, approachable relationship between MDT members will be needed. An individual case-by-case basis will be imperative to alleviate stereotypes and emotions from the last case into the team’s current treatment plans. Thus, everyone needs to be willing to step out of the box but maintain and abide by the policies and procedures of the disciplines they are representing at the table, asking questions, making no assumptions, and providing a willingness to be open, and driven to seek out why someone is not agreeing with me and what we can do better to be just and fair for this child and his or her family.
This must-read book is for the seasoned clinical team member as well as someone new to the MDT field. This book helps the clinician engaged in work with documented individuals who have issues. It helps to approach each situation with a clear mind and an empathetic attitude and have an understanding of how his or her biases (implicit or explicit) play a role at the MDT meeting. Dr. Holmes and LMSW Lamb share the importance of each team member engaging in personal “inner healing” as the MDT team makes treatment recommendations based on what the child, his or her parents, and the community at large are needing.
This book shows clinicians and other professionals the main reason why bringing up implicit and/or explicit issues is important to understand. The reason is to help professionals in all disciplines know we have biases but that we often don’t openly talk about them. The clinician’s interpretation can become fogged based on faulty beliefs or feelings about something or someone from their own past history. For example, it can be difficult for the clinician and/or MDT team member who came from a family system where information is not always allowed to be shared and who came from families that are enmeshed, disengaged, rigid, and/or having a history of substance abuse/sexual abuse or domestic violence. Thus, the MDT team member’s biases on making a determination based on facts provided is sometimes different from what should be a simple observation. Therefore, at each MDT meeting, we must also remember individual participants may not always be the same players as in previous meetings. Thus, communication is another important bui