The diversity status of the psychotherapist: editorial introduction

During the past decade or so, the multicultural or diversity movement in the United States has begun to deeply affect psychotherapy. Too often, authors admonished readers to pay more attention to, for example, racial and ethnic factors when working with racial/ethnic minority patients without sharing what actually happened in the treatment with actual cases. We also seem to equate multicultural psychotherapy with the patient's minority or diversity status, seeming to forget that the therapist's diversity status is also a key element of the treatment process. The psychotherapist/scholars that make up the authors in this special section address four topics. They were asked to provide (1) a description of their diversity status, (2) key clinical issues raised for them as psychotherapists, given their diversity status, (3) key clinical issues raised for their patients given their diversity status, and (4) effective treatment strategies for addressing their diversity status and its impact on the treatment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).