Patients' race/ethnicity in relation to their experiences of and attitudes toward therapist referral/assignment

Growing research demonstrates that psychotherapists have measurement-based effectiveness strengths and weaknesses, both in treating patients with specific mental health concerns and, distinctly, racial/ethnic identities. Moreover, emerging research indicates that mental health care (MHC) patients in general would value having such therapist "performance" information inform their personal referrals and case assignments. However, prior work has not examined whether patients' experiences of and attitudes toward therapist referral/assignment, including the integration of effectiveness data, differ by racial/ethnic identity. Addressing this gap, the present study surveyed treatment-familiar, engaged, or seeking adults (N = 308) via Amazon's Mechanical Turk to explore differences between People of Color (POC; i.e. those possessing a non-White and/or Latinx identity) and White stakeholders regarding their (a) experiences of and inputs into identifying and initiating MHC with a therapist, and (b) attitudes toward using therapist performance data to inform referral/assignment. Results generally suggested that MHC stakeholders have experienced some difficulty finding a good-fitting therapist and would value using therapist effectiveness data to enhance this process. Notably, POC versus White stakeholders endorsed more positive attitudes toward harnessing therapist data, supporting that doing so could potentially help address the needs of marginalized populations and redress the MHC disparities they have historically faced.