Tag Archives: CARED Perspectives

COVID-19 Pandemic: The Not So Grey Side

This post is a part of the series, “CARED Perspectives,” developed by the APAGS Committee for the Advancement of Racial and Ethnic Diversity (CARED). This series discusses current events and how these events relate to graduate students in psychology. If you are interested in contributing to the CARED Perspectives series, please contact Terrill Taylor, Chair of APAGS-CARED.

By Sonia Rehman

There is no doubt that the pandemic wreaked havoc on human lives. However, it connected us in numerous ways as well. The modified lifestyle due to COVID-19 offered me new ways to conduct my personal and professional life. I consider myself the beneficiary of the new virtual world, and here’s my story.

As the world turned toward holding virtual rather than in-person events, it enabled me to attend numerous national and international conferences, without incurring traveling and lodging costs. It also allowed several of my colleagues from Pakistan and India to participate in conferences in the US for the first time. Securing a visa to visit the US has been a significant challenge for students in developing countries, so virtual conferences made it possible for anyone around the world to become a part of this learning experience with reduced registration fees and no need for a visa. During networking events, international participants shared their perspectives on advancements made in the field and discussed opportunities for collaboration. The emerging prospect of in-person conferences made me wonder about what might result in limited accessibility for these events. I believe our field can benefit from remaining accessible, especially as increased migration and telecommunication advancements continue to change the biopsychosocial aspects of human lives.

There is an increased opportunity to learn from one another in this new digitized world. For example, the new norm of connecting virtually allowed me to have a mentor in Spain. With her help, I look forward to getting involved in international collaborations to advance my understanding of neuropsychology through a cross-cultural lens. At the beginning of my doctoral program, I was interested in exploring psychological issues for minority adolescents and joined a research lab accordingly. As I progressed through the program, I became more interested in neuropsychology and wanted to engage in research in that area. However, my options were limited, and a break appeared imminent.

As many labs resorted to working virtually due to the pandemic, it opened opportunities to get involved remotely. I applied to and became a part of a lab that operates in northern California even while I live near Washington, DC. The accessibility of this kind of remote opportunity has been a great asset for many students and continues to connect scholars worldwide.

Receiving training in teleassessment is another benefit of the increasingly virtual world. Providing psychological interventions remotely has enabled many minority patients to seek services who may have otherwise been unable to travel the distance to clinics. . Telehealth has also increased access to medical and mental health care for families living in rural areas. I am especially thrilled at the prospect of increasing the scope of neuropsychology through telemedicine. Finally, taking online classes has enabled me to attend to my children’s needs and coordinate my parents’ medical appointments, all while actively pursuing my dream of becoming a clinical neuropsychologist.

I thank you for reading my COVID-19 story.

CARED Perspectives: Impact of COVID-19 and Vaccines on Underserved Communities and Graduate Students

This post is a part of the series, “CARED Perspectives,” developed by the APAGS Committee for the Advancement of Racial and Ethnic Diversity (CARED). This series discusses current events and how these events relate to graduate students in psychology. If you are interested in contributing to the CARED Perspectives series, please contact Terrill Taylor, Chair of APAGS-CARED.

By Asia Perkins, Georgina Rosenbrock, and Sonia Rehman

We are swiftly approaching the anniversary marking two years of sheltering at home. At the outset of the coronavirus pandemic, it appeared that we were all in this together, that the virus was an equal opportunity offender, and that in a relatively short period of time, things would go back to normal. However, one thing that has been made clear since then is that our communities of color and other marginalized populations are disproportionately affected by this public health crisis. Specifically, members in our Black and African American, Latine, Indigenous Peoples, and Criminal and Juvenile Justice communities have been placed at higher risk for exposure to coronavirus due to lower rates of educational attainment, income, healthcare coverage, and the ability to consistently maintain social distance. For our students from underserved communities, we also witnessed a disproportionate impact on the quality of their virtual education compared to students from more privileged backgrounds (e.g., White, higher socioeconomic status, heterosexual, cisgender). Overall, pre-existing disparities across multiple domains have been, at best, highlighted, and, at worst, exacerbated by this pandemic. 

It is no secret that there is a long history of medical mistreatment, abuse, and torture against marginalized communities, especially against Black, Indigenous, and Latine populations (e.g., Tuskegee Syphilis Study, forced sterilization, lack of anesthesia during surgeries and experimentation). As a result of this pattern of cruelty, infrahumanization, and dehumanization, many individuals who identify as racially or ethnically minoritized have been understandably hesitant to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. However, since the death rate for COVID-19 is highest among communities of color due to numerous systemic factors, this vaccine hesitancy has been particularly concerning. Individuals who did choose to seek out the vaccine faced their own series of challenges. Across the country, the COVID-19 vaccine has been disproportionately distributed to White communities. Additionally, we have observed a disturbing trend of wealthy, White individuals using their money and power to secure vaccine doses that were originally meant for poor communities and communities of color. These trends placed additional pressure and stress on graduate students of color as we watched our communities fight for health equity and struggle to place trust in a system that has consistently mistreated us.

The issues surrounding students are further intensified when it comes to international students in the U.S. For example, the impact of the U.S. government’s executive orders restricting travel from several countries in 2017 was widespread. A recent study showed that international students had to change their travel plans for conferences and visiting families. It also perpetuated fears about their ability to secure jobs after graduation to legally remain in the U.S. (Todoran et al., 2020). International students were experiencing similar fears during COVID-19 pandemic, including worries about maintaining visa status during virtual learning, graduating on time, and finding opportunities to secure optional practical training (OPT) after graduation. In addition, increased loneliness has also impacted these students. Research shows that loneliness affects individuals’ feelings of happiness, cognitive functioning, and physical health (Yeh, 2017). From early 2020, international students experienced isolation from family and friends with decreased opportunities to work on campus and increased expenses due to longer stays in the U.S. While many campuses have reopened for the fall semester of 2021, it is imperative to continue providing guidelines to individuals about the ways to enhance social connections to prevent loneliness.

Much like the communities we serve and reside in, graduate students from marginalized backgrounds have also been disproportionately impacted during the pandemic. The unexpected nature of this pandemic has brought additional costs for technology, housing, and training. Combined with increasingly limited opportunities for university funding and lost wages from off-campus employment sources, our low-income students have perhaps suffered the most when acclimating to this “new normal.” Many of us also lost access to systems of support that promoted our overall well-being, resulting in heightened depression, anxiety, stress, grief, and trauma. Taken altogether, these experiences have called for institutions to better support marginalized students’ emotional, health, and financial needs so they can continue to meet the challenges of pursuing graduate degrees while maintaining their health and well-being.

Overall, these past two years have been incredibly tough and stressful for many of us. While it is unlikely that 2022 will provide all of the solutions for our struggles, we hope that it will offer some moments of peace and healing through self-care, connecting with your community, and structural change.

References

Anderson, G. (2020, September 16). Low-income and students of color in greatest need of pandemic relief. Retrieved February 24, 2021, from https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/09/16/low-income-and-students-color-greatest-need-pandemic-relief

Baggaley, K. (2020, September 18). America has a long history of forced sterilization. Retrieved March 8, 2021, from https://www.popsci.com/story/health/forced-sterilization-american-history/

Bhavan, K. (2021, February 4). COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy: How to overcome the culture of mistrust. Retrieved March 8, 2021, from https://utswmed.org/medblog/covid-19-vaccine-hesitancy-mistrust/

Ellis, N., & McPhillips, T. (2021, January 26). White people are getting vaccinated at higher rates than Black and Latino Americans. Retrieved March 8, 2021, from https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/26/us/vaccination-disparities-rollout/index.html

Goodnough, A., & Hoffman, J. (2021, March 4). The wealthy are getting more vaccinations, even in poorer neighborhoods. Retrieved March 8, 2021, from https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/02/health/white-people-covid-vaccines-minorities.html

Impact of covid-19 on minoritized and marginalized communities. (2020, October 7). Retrieved February 24, 2021, from https://www.ama-assn.org/delivering-care/health-equity/impact-covid-19-minoritized-and-marginalized-communities

Jane Addams College of social work. (2020, April 29). Retrieved February 24, 2021, from https://socialwork.uic.edu/news-stories/covid-19-disproportionate-impact-marginalized-populations/

Laidler, J. (2020, October 30). COVID carries triple risks for college students of color. Retrieved February 24, 2021, from https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/10/covid-carries-triple-risks-for-college-students-of-color/

Nuriddin, A., Mooney, G., & White, A. I. (2020). Reckoning with histories of medical racism and violence in the USA. The Lancet, 396(10256), 949-951.

Todoran, C., & Peterson, C. (2020). Should They Stay or Should They Go? How the 2017 U.S. Travel Ban Affects International Doctoral Students. Journal of Studies in International Education, 24(4), 440–455. https://doi.org/10.1177/1028315319861344

Yeh, C. S. (2017, January 13). The power and prevalence of loneliness – harvard health blog – harvard health publishing. Harvard Health Blog. https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/the-power-and-prevalence-of-loneliness-2017011310977

Let’s Get Funded!

This blog post is a part of the series, “CARED Perspectives,” developed by the APAGS Committee for the Advancement of Racial and Ethnic Diversity. This series will discuss current events and how these events relate to graduate students in psychology. If you are interested in contributing to the CARED Perspectives series, please contact Elizabeth Louis.

During my educational journey, I never imagined that I would be pursuing higher education as a first-generation college student. In my Haitian household, the common expected answers to questions about what I wanted to be when I grew up was the well rehearsed  response of a “doctor or lawyer.” Any other profession seemed not to exist to my Haitian parents. However, the real question that crossed my mind was,  who would be funding my education?

While I excelled in high school to attend a community college (Miami Dade College) and transferred to Georgetown University, I was blessed to receive a need-based scholarship. Yet, when graduate school rolled around, I felt even more clueless about how to fund not only my education, but also my living expenses. I took on the role of being my own personal banker, financial coach, piggy bank, and investor. There have been some noteworthy strategies that I have tried which helped me gain wisdom.  I have come up short on many opportunities because I did not fully understand the audience of selection committees, selected recommenders who were not a good match or failed to seek out answers to my questions. I have learned to reach out to my mentors and colleagues early on for feedback, research scholarships a year or a semester in advance, call scholarship committees that I was initially unsuccessful with, and use my calendar to organize deadlines. I constantly reminded myself to overcome my initial fear of applying to opportunities and let my perseverance be the recipe for success.

When thinking about scholarships, grants, and fellowships there are many opportunities for ethnic/racial graduate students…here’s the BREAK DOWN…(cues a Harlem shake).

Meet with peers, colleagues, mentors, faculty, and staff members –whether you know them or not — to inquire about opportunities in the following areas. You never know where one door will lead you. Also, be sure to follow-up on different funding sources.

  • Department and psychology program
  • School/College in which your program is within
  • Your Institution
    • Dean’s Office
    • The Graduate School
    • Office of Research and Grants
    • Graduate Assistantships
  • Other offices – E.g. International Office, Office of Institutional Diversity

Whether you attend conferences, are a student member of an APA division, or receive news from APAGS, please be diligent in creating connections and fostering relationships outside your school. Also, feel free to ask questions about funding opportunities to support your research and clinical work!

Now do not sleep on search engines like Google, as it can unlock many opportunities.

  • Google
    • American Association of University Women
    • National Science Foundation
    • Southern Regional Education Board Awards
    • Sororities/Fraternities

During my journey in graduate school, I was positioned to look beyond monetary funding but to think creatively of ways to gain priceless experiences and take more ownership of my own finances and budgeting skills.

  • Service – opportunities to serve, share your student perspectives, travel, and learn about other forms of scholarship
    • APA Memorandum of Understanding (e.g. Portugal and other countries)
    • APA Commission on Accreditation Student Member
    • APA Master’s Task Force
  • Invest in Yourself
    • Learn about budgeting and saving strategies (e.g. Qapital, Acorns, David Ramsey)
    • Find an affordable financial coach
    • Keep tabs on your loan(s) and retirement funding (Roth IRA)

I hope that these nuggets of information will help you develop strategies to fund your graduate education, expand your ways of thinking about scholarship, and provide you with support and resources. This journey toward financial stability will have its challenges, yet can be extremely rewarding. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or other resources that I have not listed here.

Also, click here for a listing of additional funding opportunities that will be added on the APAGS CARED website. Wishing you all the best…kenbe la (hold on and press on)!

Elizabeth Louis, PhD

CARED Perspectives: COVID-19 Pandemic Unearthing Challenges and Exposing Disparities

This post is a part of the series, “CARED Perspectives,” developed by the APAGS Committee for the Advancement of Racial and Ethnic Diversity (CARED). This series discusses current events and how these events relate to graduate students in psychology. If you are interested in contributing to the CARED Perspectives series, please contact Aleesha Young, Chair of APAGS-CARED.

By Sarah Gubara, MS

Globally, the COVID-19 pandemic has made our worlds a little smaller. With the majority of individuals confined to their homes, the chaos of the first couple of weeks has created white noise that has become increasingly overbearing. Most importantly, this pandemic has highlighted the significant disparities prevalent across our communities. While many are hunkering down in the safety of their homes with loved ones, there are  other vulnerable families in our communities that are contending with economic and health disparities, food and financial insecurity, and isolation from resources and social support. 

Interestingly, the economic disparities related to this pandemic are shared among some graduate students and their clients alike. During these uncertain times both practicum students and clients may be contending with lost wages, uncertainty about the future, and experiencing increased anxiety. This emotive weight on the therapeutic relationship compounds with existing challenges for marginalized clients and therapists. While many student trainees are receiving excellent supervision to process these changes, there are some that are navigating this process alone. It is at this point that a clinician’s ability, or lack thereof, in multicultural responsiveness is highlighted as the fallout of this pandemic requires higher levels of cultural insight and sensitivity, self-efficacy, and awareness of social injustices and disparities. In addition to the therapeutic adjustments we need to make, the call to mobilize services quickly to telehealth further exposes the depth of the economic divide. 

While telehealth and remote education are both blessings during this time, they are also a privilege. Within weeks, graduate practicum students and their clients were privy to the sharp economic inequalities that exist. For instance, in my work with survivors of torture I was blessed to work with a responsive team that provided thorough and consistent supervision, and strategies to accommodate our clients. However, in speaking with clients I began to understand the dearth of resources that exist for them and the obstacles that remain ahead. Session after session with clients led to similar concerns that included loss of work, reduced transportation, limited community support, and so on. While my agency ensured that we were prepared to deliver services, I  realized that my entire caseload may not have the resources to readily receive those services. Some of my clients share rooms with two to three other people and privacy is an issue. Other clients may not have smartphones or wi-fi to download Zoom or any other virtual meeting application. Yet others are parents who are now contending with sharing devices, teaching, and managing their child(ren) without the support of the school day structure.  

Furthermore, the existing protective factors that clients often turn to, such as churches, are now no longer an option. Many of my clients are refugees and asylum seekers, some of whom are new to the community. Without the access of community gatherings like churches or local centers, clients feel isolated and untethered, particularly when language acquisition is a challenge. Given the timing of this pandemic, many practicum students are now terminating with clients as it is the end of the semester for most of us. The loss of identity, resources, and support continues to be compounded at a high cost for our most vulnerable clients. 

Together, graduate practicum students and their clients are having to adjust to the challenging landscape and process its shared trauma, while simultaneously developing new coping strategies. While in some circumstances, there is no certainty at the present, let us not forget the glaring disparities that we now see and let’s do what we can to help while also taking care of ourselves.  For now, we must applaud, encourage, and support the resilience, perseverance, and creativity of our clients and fellow graduate students.

Sarah Gubara, MS is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University (BA’11, MS ’17) and a practicum student at TASSC International working with survivors of state-sponsored torture in Washington, DC. She is in the final year of her combined PhD in Counseling Psychology and School Psychology at Florida State University and will be starting her APA-accredited internship with the Treehouse Child Advocacy Center in July 2020.

The Examination for Professional Practice in Psychology (EPPP): What’s race got to do with it?

This blog post is a part of the series, “CARED Perspectives,” developed by the APAGS Committee for the Advancement of Racial and Ethnic Diversity (CARED). This series will discuss current events and issues in psychology and how these relate to graduate students. If you are interested in contributing to the CARED Perspectives series, please contact Aleesha Young, Chair of APAGS-CARED.

By Fiona C. Thomas

Grad school, that time in your life where you are constantly thinking about what milestone comes next. Course completion, Master’s thesis, comps, practica, dissertation proposal, data collection, analysis, publications…and that final training experience…internship. Although it feels like so much of our preparation in grad school is for this near final stage of the internship, there is one more milestone to meet before we can finally refer to ourselves as licensed psychologists – the EPPP.

The Examination for Professional Practice in Psychology (EPPP) was first administered in 1965 (Rehm & Lipkins, 2006) and is now a key requirement to independent practice as a clinical psychologist. It is required for licensing in all US states, three US territories, and the majority of Canadian provinces (DeMers & Schaffer, 2012). After all our years of training, and unique experiences along the way, it is that one shared experience we will all have as we work towards independent practice.

As I prepare to begin internship in September, this next milestone of licensure is on my mind. When do I begin preparing for this exam? What are the most effective methods to study for it? What is the pass rate? It is also timely to be thinking about this exam as a second part to the EPPP, which assesses professional skill, is a new requirement coming to an undisclosed list of jurisdictions in 2020 (Association of State and Provincial Psychology Boards [ASPPB], 2019).

With these questions on my mind, I recently became aware of a study conducted by Dr. Brian Sharpless which found performance discrepancies based on ethnicity (2018). In other words, failure rates were highest for individuals who identified as Black (38.5%), Hispanic (35.6%), Asian (24%), and lowest for those who identified as White (14.07%) (Sharpless, 2018). Interestingly, it was not the first time these findings emerged. In 2013, Sharpless and Barber identified that doctoral programs with greater ethnic diversity also reported lower program-wide EPPP pass rates. Going back almost four decades to an early study on this topic, Werner (1981) similarly found that Whites had an EPPP pass rate almost twice that of any other ethnic group. Reviewing survey data of individuals who graduated between 2005 and 2015 with a doctoral degree in clinical, counseling, school or combined/integrated psychology, Bowman and Ameen (2018) found similar results. In particular, their analysis indicated that White psychologists were significantly more likely to pass the EPPP on the first administration compared to psychologists of color (92 percent vs. 83 percent). For this study, psychologists of color included individuals who identified as Asian, Hispanic/Latino, multiracial, Black, American Indian/Alaska Native, and Middle Eastern/North African (Bowman & Ameen, 2018).

As someone who identifies as an ethnic minority, these studies surprised me. What variables contributed to these fail rates? What could be done about this? And what did I need to know to be better prepared so that I didn’t become an embarrassing and expensive statistic?

Of course, as with all research, there are limitations to these findings, and this is important to keep in mind. Until recently, demographic information (e.g., ethnicity) was not collected in EPPP administration (DeMers, 2009). This means that these studies are mainly based on self-report information, which is less robust and reliable compared to test administration data (Bowman & Ameen, 2018). Additionally, some ethnic minorities are not properly represented in these studies. In the studies mentioned here, Middle Eastern/North African (MENA) Psychologists and Indigenous Psychologists are not included as distinct groups. We also have limited information about pass/fail rates for ethnic minority licensure applicants in Canada. Despite these limitations, the replication of such results has prompted me to wonder what the root causes of these differences are and what can be done to address this discrepancy.

In good news, the test publisher, ASPPB, has started collecting race and ethnicity data as optional information on the EPPP. This will continue to better inform whether some test takers, namely test-takers of color, are at a disadvantage. Importantly, this information will be collected as optional data after the completion of the exam to avoid priming any stereotype threats (ASPPB, 2019). If questions show differential responding by ethnicity, ASPPB will take specific items to a diversity committee who can then review and decide whether to keep or discard the questions in future tests. Relatedly, graduate and internship programs are also becoming aware of this discrepancy. Such knowledge can lead to initiatives to better prepare ethnic minority students.

As psychology’s clients and practitioners becomes increasingly diverse, it is important to understand how the EPPP and other high-stakes exams may be leaving certain individuals behind. Factors such as Eurocentric item construction, minority stress, or performance expectancy may or may not be playing a role in score discrepancies (Bowman & Ameen, 2018). Such hurdles can only be identified by appropriately collecting data on race and ethnicity, and transparently reviewing it.

As a member of the APAGS Committee for the Advancement of Racial and Ethnic Diversity (APAGS-CARED), we are keen to explore this further and will be hosting a webinar on this very topic on October 1, 2019.  We hope you will join us!

If you have experience with taking the EPPP and have tips to share for future licensure applicants, we would love to hear from you! Please feel free to share your experiences below.

References

Association of State and Provincial Psychology Boards. (2019). The Examination for Professional Practice in Psychology (EPPP): Frequently asked questions. Retrieved from https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.asppb.net/resource/resmgr/eppp_2/eppp__part_2-skills__faq_s.pdf

Bowman, N., & Ameen, E. (2018, June). Exploring differences in pass rates on the Examination for Professional Practice in Psychology. Retrieved from https://www.apa.org/pi/oema/resources/communique/2018/06/pass-rates.

DeMers, S. T. (2009). Understanding the purpose, strengths, and limitations of the EPPP: A response to Sharpless and Barber. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 40, 348–353. doi:10.1037/a0015734.

DeMers, S. T., & Schaffer, J. B. (2012). The regulation of professional psychology. In S. J. Knapp (Ed.), APA handbook of ethics in psychology: Volume 1: Moral foundations and common themes (pp. 453–482). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Rehm, L. P., & Lipkins, R. H. (2006). The examination for professional practice in psychology. In T. J. Vaughn (Ed.), Psychology licensure and certification: What students need to know (pp. 39–53). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Sharpless, B., & Barber, J. (2013). Predictors of Program Performance on the Examination for Professional Practice in Psychology (EPPP). Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 44(4), 208-217.

Werner, E. (1981). A review of the examination for professional practice in psychology. Sacramento, CA: California Department of Consumer Affairs.