Opportunities for Working with Ethnically Diverse Populations
Amherst is located 30-45 minutes north of Holyoke and Springfield, Massachusetts which are very ethnically and socioeconomically diverse communities. 41% of Holyoke residents and 27% of Springfield residents identify themselves as Latino/a (predominantly Puerto Rican), and 21% of Springfield residents identify themselves as black or African-American. Amherst also has a smaller but sizeable ethnic minority population, including but not limited to Asian-American (9% of the population), African-American (5%), and Latino/a (6%) communities. Community agencies have been very open to helping faculty and students recruit research participants through their sites, which have resulted in a number of research projects, dissertations, and theses that have diverse samples. Many of our clinical practica sites provide services to diverse populations. Summaries of research and clinical opportunities are below:
Clinical Practica Opportunities:
Psychological Services Center (PSC)
The Psychological Services Center strives to increase access to mental health services to members of disadvantaged groups. By providing low-cost mental health services, the Psychological Services Center can be accessed by a wide range of community members. Additionally, our areas of specialty give opportunities for community members to identify areas of need and receive services tailored to those needs.
Mt Holyoke College Counseling Services
Clients are high achieving women from a wide variety of backgrounds. The counseling center sees about 25% of the college body at some point during their 4 years. Some clients are nontraditional students and there is good exposure to diversity with regard to sexual orientation and gender (e.g., transgendered students). There are also many international students.
Springfield/Holyoke Juvenile Court Clinic
Clients are juvenile offenders who have been referred for mental health assessments. The majority of cases are in the 12-17 year old range. Most clients are male and are Latino (primarily Puerto Rican) or Black and come from a disadvantaged socioeconomic background. Many Latino parents of the client do not speak English. The number of females charged with crimes and/or referred to the court clinic is steadily increasing.
ServiceNet/Department of Mental Retardation
Clients are dually-diagnosed individuals with developmental disabilities and various psychiatric disorders and include both adults and children from a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds. Experiences include both individual and family psychotherapy and assessment at a community outpatient clinic.
Baystate Adult Behavioral Health Therapy Practicum Position
The outpatient division of Adult Behavioral Health at Bay State Medical Center offers psychotherapy to a wide range of individuals. The clinic services many individuals who are from cultural minorities and lower socioeconomic status. Specifically, the center treats a large population of Hispanic (at least half of the Hispanic population are Spanish-speaking or Spanish is primary language) folks, as well as African-American, and a small number of Portuguese, Russian, and Asian individuals. The patient population often have significant medical issues (morbid obesity, neurological disorders, chronic pain, diabetes, cardiac and pulmonary disease, and oncology). A mission of the clinic has been providing services to other medical doctors; the focus of treating the patients’ psychological problems has to therefore be considered in the context of the medical issue. The practicum position also specializes in intake evaluations for individuals who are candidates for bariatric surgery. As such, practicum students have the opportunity to work as a part of a multidisciplinary team alongside psychologists, social workers, psychiatrists, nutritionists, endocrinologists, and surgeons.
The Baystate Day School
The Baystate Day School is a therapeutic day school for children and adolescents (ages 5 - 18) with psychiatric problems that prevent them (at least temporarily) from attending a typical school. The program is housed on the south campus of Baystate Medical Center, in the heart of Springfield, MA. Most students come from the Springfield school district, with a few from Holyoke and a few from more outlying suburban regions. Roughly 80-90% of the students belong to minority ethnic groups, and probably 70-80% are near or below the poverty line.
Bay State Neuropsychological Testing Practicum
Neuropsychological testing is offered at an outpatient division of Bay State Medical Center. Patients range from young children to older adults and are referred for testing by doctors or psychotherapists. Presenting problems include ADHD and learning disabilities, psychological disorders (e.g., depression, pervasive developmental disorder), and physical insult from accidents or tumors, among others. You will learn to administer a broad neuropsychological testing battery and to write testing reports.
May Institute
The May Institute delivers services to developmentally disabled individuals with a range of disorders, levels of functioning and ages. The interventions they provide are strictly behavioral in orientation. There are some opportunities to get involved with research at this practicum - though that requires some initiative. As a practicum student, you can get involved with the May in one or more of the following programs.
Early Intervention: This program provides interventions to infants and toddlers who have been given diagnoses on the Autism spectrum. This program involves home visits.
School-based interventions: The May recently opened a school in W. Springfield for children with developmental disabilities. This is a great opportunity to do intensive work with children who have autism-related disorders (including Down's Syndrome and Retts), to learn how to manage a child's behavioral problems, and to learn about applied behavior analysis (i.e., the power of reinforcement).
Adult services: The May operates group homes throughout the Pioneer Valley (including one in Northampton and one in Hadley near Hampshire College) and provides day services for developmentally disabled adults. There are a range of levels of functioning and your involvement could range from training staff to implement a behavior plan, collecting and analyzing data on existing behavior plans and developing and modifying behavior plans/assessments on a wide range of topics from language acquisition to functional analyses of self-injurious behavior.
Research Opportunities
Theses & dissertations conducted in the past 10 years that address different types of diversity including ethnicity, social class, and aging
Jade Logan (in progress). The role of racial attitudes in clinical supervison. Dissertation.
Dhara Thakar (in progress). Mental health and acculturation trajectories of Indian international students prior to and during the first year of graduate school. Dissertation.
Brown S, (2009). Adults Perceptions of Children's Relational and Physical Agression as a Function of Adult Ethnicity and Child Gender. Dissertation.
Amy Claxton (2008) Intersecting Contexts: An examination of Social Class, Gender, Race and Depressive Symptoms. Dissertation.
Bilal Ghandour (2008) Differences Between European and Lebanese American's Values about Marriage. Dissertation.
Carvalho, J.O. (2008). Emotion and executive functioning: The effect of normal mood states on fluency tasks. Master’s thesis.
Akerstedt (2007) Do Age-Related Changes in Sleep Become Magnified in Individuals with Depressive Symptoms? Master’s thesis.
Candice Fischer (2007). Parent-Centered Values Among Latino Immigrant Mothers. Dissertation.
Thakar, D. (2007). Parenting Style Discrepancies: A Comparison of Inter-Ethnic and Intra-Ethnic Couple. Master's thesis.
Dobbs, J. (2006). Family literacy and preschool children's social-emotional development in a head start population. Dissertation.
Rodriguez L. (2004). The cultural context of parenting. Master's thesis.
Simon, S. (2004). Accessibility of treatment for depression in a diverse sample of women. Dissertation.
Fisher, P. (2003) Early math interest and the development of math skills: an understudied relationship. Dissertation.
Greer, J. (2003). The relationship between cultural background and the experience of patients in primary care medical settings. Dissertation.
Beckford, S. (2003). Relations among psychosocial risk factors, coping behaviors, and depression symptoms in late adolescent West Indian girls. Dissertation.
Cheng, A. (2003) Narratives of second-generation Asian American experience: Legacies of immigration, trauma, and loss. Dissertation.
Dobbs, J. (2003). Attention in the preschool classroom: The relationships among child gender, child misbehavior, and types of teacher attention. Master's thesis.
Wong, F. (2003): The experience of Chinese American women with cultural stereotypes and parental expectations. Dissertation.
Publications and presentations that focus on diversity (past 5 years)
Social class and ethnicity
Perry-Jenkins, M. (in press). Making a difference for hourly workers: Considering work-life policies in social context. Chapter in A. Booth and A.C. Crouter (Eds.) Work- Life Policies That Make a Real Difference for Individuals, Families and Organizations. Urban Institute Press.
Harvey, E.A., Friedman, J., Miner, A., Bartolomei, R., Youngwirth, S. HAshim, B., & Arnold, D. H. (in press). The role of ethnicity in observers' ratings of mother-child behavior, Developmental Psychology.
Meagher, S. M., Arnold, D. H., Doctoroff, G. L., Dobbs, J., & Fisher, P. H. (2009). Preschool social-emotional problems and the development of depressive symptoms in school-age children. Early Education and Development, 20, 1-24.
Thakar, D. & Dadlani, M. (2008). Exploring ethnic identity from the start: Theropeutic challenges and strategies. Interactive workshop presented at the annual meeting of the Asian American Psychological Association, Boston, MA.
Rao, M. & Thakar, D. (2008). Experiences of racism: Variations within South Asian communities. Interactive workshop presented at the annual meeting of the Asian American Psychological Association, Boston, MA.
Perry-Jenkins, M., Smith, J. & Claxton A. (2008) A Socio Cultural Lens on Mothers’ Mental Health across the Transition to Parenthood. Paper presented at Annual meeting of the National Council on Family Relations. Little Rock Arkansas Nov. 13 2008
Arnold, D. H., Zeljo, A., Doctoroff, G. L, & Ortiz, C. (2008). Parent involvement in preschool: Predictors and the relation of involvement to preliteracy development. School Psychology Review, 37, 74-90.
Meagher, S. M., Arnold, D. H., Doctoroff, G. L., & Baker, C. N. (2008). The relationship between maternal beliefs and behavior during shared reading. Early Education and Development, 19, 138-160.
Hellerstedt, W.L., Madsen, N.J., Gunnar, M.R., Grotevant, H.D., Lee, R.M., & Johnson, D.E. (2008). The International Adoption Project: Population-based surveillance of Minnesota parents who adopted children internationally. Maternal and Child Health Journal, 12(2), 162-171.
Constantino, M. J., Overtree, C. E., & Geva, Z. (2008). The influence of patients' expectations on alliance quality and treatment engagement in treatment-as-usual in a training clinic: Preliminary findings. Paper presented at the meeting of the North American Chapter of the Society for Psychotherapy Research, New Haven, CT.
Goldberg, A. E., & Perry-Jenkins, M. (2007). The division of labor and perceptions of parental roles: Lesbian couples across the transition to parenthood. Journal of Social & Personal Relationships, 24, 297-318.
Perry-Jenkins, M., Goldberg, A., Pierce C, & Sayer, A. (2007). Shift Work, role overload and the transition to parenthood. Journal of Marriage and Family, 69, 123-138.
Perry-Jenkins, M., Bourne, H., & Meteyer, K. (2007). Work-family challenges for blue-collar families. Chapter in T. Juravich (Ed.) pp. 185-204, The Future of Work in Massachusetts. University of Massachusetts Press.
Brown, S. A., Arnold, D. H., Dobbs, J., & Doctoroff, G. L. (2007). Parenting predictors of overt and relational aggression among Puerto Rican and European American school-aged children. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 22, 147-159.
Overtree, C.E. (2007). Providing Low Fee Psychological Assessments as a Community Service. In A Social Justice Agenda for Training in Training Clinics. Symposium presented at the American Psychological Association Conference, San Francisco, CA.
Claxton, A. & Perry-Jenkins, M. Why Social Class Matters: Its meaning and measurement. Paper presented at Annual Meeting of the National Council on Family Relations. Pittsburgh, PA November 2007.
Perry-Jenkins, M., & Smith, J.A. Blue-collar Blues: Work conditions and the mental health of dual-earner parents. Paper presented at Annual Meeting of the National Council on Family Relations. Pittsburgh, PA November 2007.
Lee, R.M., Grotevant, H.D., Hellerstedt, W., Gunnar, M., and the Minnesota International Adoption Project Team. (2006). Cultural socialization in families with internationally adopted children. Journal of Family Psychology, 20, 571-580.
Arnold, D. H., Brown, S., Meagher, S., Baker, C. N., Dobbs, J., & Doctoroff, G. L. (2006). Preschool-based programs for externalizing problems, Education and Treatment of Children, 29, 311-340.
Dobbs, J., Doctoroff, G. L., Fisher, P. H., & Arnold, D. H. (2006). The association between preschool children’s socio-emotional functioning and mathematical achievement. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 27, 97-108.
Doctoroff, G. L., Greer, J., & Arnold, D. H. (2006). Gender differences in the relationship between social behavior and early academic development in preschoolers. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 27, 1-13.
Maxie, A. C., Arnold, D. H., & Stephenson, M. (2006). Do therapists address ethnic differences in cross-cultural psychotherapy? Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training, 43, 85-98.
Gibson, P., Nelson-Christine, J., Grotevant, H.D., & Kwon, H-K. (2005). The well-being of African American adolescents within formal and informal adoption arrangements. Adoption Quarterly, 9(1), 59-78.
Kim, H-J, Arnold, D. H, Fisher, P. H., & Zeljo, A. (2005). Parenting and preschoolers’ symptoms as a function of child gender and SES. Child and Family Behavior Therapy, 27, 23-41.
Perry-Jenkins, M. (2005). Work in the working class: Challenges facing workers and their families. Chapter in Bianchi, S.M., Casper, L.M., & R.B. King (Eds.) pp. 453-472 Work, Family, Health and Well-being. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Perry-Jenkins, M. (2004). The time and timing of work: Unique challenges facing low-income families. A. Crouter and A. Booth (Eds.) Work-Family Challenges for Low-Income Parents and Their Children. (pp, 107-116). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Perry-Jenkins, M. & Turner, E. (2004). Jobs, marriage and parenting: Working it out indual-earner families. Chapter in M. Coleman and L.H. Ganong (Eds.). Handbook of Contemporary Families: Considering the Past, Contemplating the Future. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Dobbs, J., Arnold, D. H., Doctoroff, G. L. (2004). Attention in the preschool classroom: The relationships among child gender, child misbehavior, and types of teacher attention.Early Child Development and Care, 174, 281-295.
Doctoroff, G. L. & Arnold, D. H. (2004). Changes in externalizing behavior in preschoolers: The predictive utility of parent report, teacher report, and observation. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, 33, 813-818.
Goldberg, A. & Perry-Jenkins, M. (2004). The division of labor and working-class women’s well-being across the transition to parenthood. Journal of Family Psychology, 18, 225-236.
Aging
Ready, R.E., Marquez, D.X., & Akerstedt, A. (2009). Emotions in younger and older adults: Retrospective and prospective associations with sleep and physical activity. Journal of Experimental Aging Research. 35, 348-368.
Ready, R.E., Carvalho, J., & Weinberger, M.I. (2009). Emotional complexity in younger, midlife, and older adults. Psychology and Aging, 23, 928-933.
Lundquist, T. & Ready, R.E. (2008). Young adult attitudes about Alzheimer’s disease. American Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, 23, 267-273.
Ready, R.E. & Robinson, M.D. (2008). Do older individuals adapt to their traits?: Personality-emotion relations among younger and older adults. Journal of Research in Personality, 42, 1020-1030.
Kapucu, A., Rotello, C., Ready, R.E., & Seidl, K. (2008). Response bias in 'remembering' emotional stimuli: A new perspective on age differences. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 34, 703-711.
Ready, R.E, Mathews, M., Leserman, A., & Paulsen, J.S. (2008). Patient and caregiver quality of life in Huntington’s disease. Movement Disorders, 23, 721-726.
Ready, R.E. & Ott, B.R. (2007/2008). Integrating patient and informant reports on the Cornell-Brown Quality of Life Scale. American Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, 22, 528-534.
Ready, R.E., Weinberger, M., & Jones, K. (2007). How happy have you felt lately? A diary study of emotion recall in older and younger adults. Cognition and Emotion, 21, 728-757.
Ready, R.E., Ott, B.R., Grace, J. (2007). Factor structure of patient and caregiver ratings on the Dementia Quality of Life Instrument. Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition, 14, 144-154.
Ready, R.E., Robinson, M.D., & Weinberger, M. (2006). Age differences in the organization of emotion knowledge: Effects involving valence and time frame. Psychology and Aging, 21, 726-736.
Ready, R.E., Ott, B.R., & Grace, J. (2006). Insight and cognitive impairment: Effects on quality of life reports from Mild Cognitive Impairment and Alzheimer’s disease patients. American Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, 21, 242-248.
Martire, L.M., Keefe, F.J., Schulz, R., Ready, R., Beach, S.R., Rudy, T.E., & Starz, T.W. (2006). Older spouses’ perception of partner’s chronic pain: Implications for spousal responses, support provision, and caregiving experiences. Psychology and Aging, 21, 222-230.
Sneed, J.R. & Whitbourne, S.K. (2006; online published 2008). Core stages in psychosocial development: A 34-year longitudinal study. Journal of Adult Development. 13, 146-157.
Brown, L.B., Ott, B.R., Papandonatos, G.D., Sui, Y., Ready, R.E., & Morris, J.C. (2005). Prediction of on-road driving performance in patients with early Alzheimer’s disease. Journal of the American Geriatric Society, 53, 94-98.
Sneed, J.R. & Whitbourne, S.K. (2005). Ageism in models of the aging self. Journal of Social Issues, 61, 375-388.
Ready, R.E., Ott, B.R., & Grace, J. (2004). Patient- versus caregiver-perspectives of quality of life in mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease. International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 19, 256-265.
Ready, R.E., Ott, B.R., & Grace, J. (2004). Validity of informant reports about AD and MCI Patient's memory. Alzheimer’s Disease and Associated Disorders, 18, 11-16.
Ready, R.E., Friedman, J., Grace, J., & Fernandez, H. (2004). Testosterone deficiency and apathy in Parkinson’s disease: A pilot study. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry, 75, 1323-1326.
Skultety, K.M. & Whitbourne, S.K. (2004). Gender differences in identity processes and self-esteem in middle and later adulthood. Journal of Women and Aging, 16, 175-188.
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