Graciela Aguilera (She/her/hers)

The article Rural Hispanic Perceptions of Mental Health: A Qualitative Study was written and supported by a multi discipline perspective. The article uses a qualitative study. The authors interviewed participants of different ethnicities within South America. The study had 8 men and 6 women involved in the study. Through interviewing the volunteers they were able to discover that the volunteers admitted to them not relying on therapy because for most of them it is about how they deal with stress. In the study we also see how most of them rely on family and food from their culture in helping them deal with mental health. However, we also see that most of them do not seek help due to the language barriers or the behavior they have experienced from other medical personnel and not feeling secure. This is important to know due to the fact that in the social work field, we work with different types of clients and it will always be a wide spectrum for different ethnicities to come seeking help. The article cited other sources in order to explain a bit more about methods that could help with some of the challenges that non white ethnicities may have to deal with. The authors talked about challenges they may have dealt with due to working with certain populations before, so they made sure to not let that affect anything. The interviews were done by an undergraduate Puerto Rican student which helped the volunteers feel at ease. They made sure to keep their biases. Overall, the article is very supported by different types of people in different fields, but one of the main contributors was a nurse who has a phd and has been looking into solutions to help this population. . 

In this Ted Talk we have Dr. Jessica Dere who is a clinical lecturer in the Department of Psychology and the Graduate Department of Psychological Clinical Science at UTSC. She has been working in the psychology department for quite some time. She talks about working with people from different cultures and how harmful it can be if one does not approach the culture properly. Dr. Dere says in the presentation that to understand a client you have to understand the culture context first. She talked about two different people who had different experiences. She talks about what they struggle with and how things could have been different had they been approached properly. She provided examples of individuals who had a hard time navigating any medical issues due to the fact they were not approached properly. This video was posted in 2015 and it’s important in our field because we live a life where our job requires us to work with people from different cultures and it is our job to be able to adjust our work so it can help the individual. Overall, this video shows that the best solution is for us to listen to our clients needs and ask them about what they would prefer so we are able to adjust our practice accordingly.