This June 25, 2024 webinar provided cultural considerations and tips for culturally responsive care when working with individuals who experience psychosis. Some of the learning goals of this webinar included:

• Understanding the pervasive impact of culture on engagement, rapport building, assessment, and treatment outcomes.
• Identifying strategies to work on becoming a culturally responsive, anti-oppressive clinician outside of the therapy room.
• Developing a framework of development that prepares you to Receive and Respond to Feedback from people with lived experience of various different social identities and backgrounds.
• Building an ethic of cultural humility that centers respectful curiosity and openness to unfamiliar cultural and social concepts across the spectrum of ability, gender, sexuality, race, and culture.
• Differentiating between cultural humility, cultural responsiveness, and cultural competence as broader concepts that must inform a holistic idea of cultural understanding.

Presenters:

Vera A. Muñiz-Saurré (they/éle) is a nonbinary, queer, Peruvian public health professional of mixed Spanish and Andean ancestry working as a Program Coordinator and Peer Advocate for the Massachusetts Psychosis Prevention Partnership (M3P) and Building Bridges towards Equity in Psychosis Intervention and Careers (2B-EPIC) grants at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and a Peer Counselor at the Lab for Early Psychosis at McLean Hospital. Vera is diagnosed with Schizoaffective disorder, a survivor of conversion therapy targeting their sexuality, and identifies as Mad and a psychiatric survivor. Starting in 2017, Vera helped found and admin the Psychosis Spectrum Server on Discord and still helps maintain that community! Vera’s ideology and public health approach centers abolition of long-standing oppressive systemic structures, investment in harm reduction-based support services, and reindigenization of academic knowledge systems in both theory and application.

Chia Hsuan Sabrina Chang (she/her) is a psychologist, Instructor at Harvard Medical School, and site supervisor for Boston University's Center for Multicultural Training in Psychology. She is proud of her identities as a first-generation immigrant and Asian-American woman, especially in the predominantly white profession of psychology. She has published several peer reviewed papers and a book chapter on cultural psychology and gender affirming care. She is passionate about providing culturally responsive, anti-oppressive therapy and supervision, the latter of which earned her the Teaching and Mentorship Award from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. She is the founder of the Anti-Racism Task Force at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center, which was bestowed the Performance Recognition Award by the Department of Mental Health. In the community, she is passionate about using her expertise as a psychologist to instigate anti-racist change and received a citation from the Massachusetts Senate for her advocacy work.