Anthony J. Marsella – författare

Crises do not occur in cultural vacuums, but help often does. Good intentions are not enough. Lack of cultural understanding, sensitivity, and competencies can hamper and even harm the professional response to disasters. To help and heal, one must know and understand the cultural background of disaster victims. Ethnocultural Perspectives on Disaster and Trauma offers readers substantive knowledge in these three vital areas of disaster response.

In this pioneering volume, experts on individual and collective trauma experience, posttraumatic stress and related syndromes, and emergency and crisis intervention – share knowledge and insights on the cultural context of working with ethnic and racial minority communities during disasters. In each chapter, emotional, psychological, and social needs as well as communal strengths and coping skills that arise in disasters are documented for major minority groups in the United States including specific chapters on African Americans, Native Americans, Arab Americans, Asian Indians, Chinese Americans, Caribbean Americans, Latin Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Vietnamese Americans. Each chapter features information on: Demographics, major historical events, and core values of each population; Important cultural insights, including communication styles, culture-specific disorders, and valid assessment instruments; Therapeutic and healing traditions versus conventional medicine and therapy; Perspectives specific to the population’s experience with disaster and trauma; Authors’ recommendations for improving services to the population; Practical appendices for readers new to the field.

This unique volume is a cultural competency compendium that will increase to the effectiveness of all who respond to disasters. It will also be of interest and value to scholars, policy makers, and health professionals working in the areas of disaster management, crisis intervention, and trauma. Ethnocultural Perspectives onDisaster and Trauma points readers to what the editors call the path “beyond simple assistance to healing and the restoration of hope and meaning.”

The psychology community recognizes that cultivating an international worldview is crucial not only to professionals and researchers, but more importantly, for professors and students of psychology as well. It is critically necessary for psychologists to learn from their colleagues who are working in different cultural contexts in order to develop the type of knowledge and psychological understanding of human behavior that will be maximally useful to practitioners and researchers alike.

This volume, Internationalizing the Psychology Curriculum in the United States, provides information and resources to help psychology faculty educate and train future generations of psychologists within a much more international mindset and global perspective. Recognizing that cultural context are central to a true and accurate psychology, the authors describes how cultural, economic, political, and social factors in different countries frame individual experience and affect the science and practice of psychology. Each of the chapters will provide a content-specific overview of how the curriculum in psychology with regards to social, development, clinical, counseling psychology, etc will need to be modified in order to present a much more global view of psychology.