Gargi Roysircar

Asian Indian College Students’ Science and Math Preferences: Influences of Cultural Contexts

Cultural, immigrant, and prejudicial contexts influence minority students’ preferences for college majors and their subsequent career development. Participants were Asian Indian immigrant college students as well as their parents. The early first-generation and late first-generation students were similar to each other in their major preferences; however, both groups had significantly greater preferences for science and math majors than the second-generation students. Parents’ perceived prejudice and preferences for science and math contributed significantly to their second-generation children’s preferences for science and math. Even though second-generation children preferred nonscience majors more than their first-generation parents, the majority reported that their actual majors were in science and math.

Assessing Acculturation and Cultural Variables

Since the 1960’s, the United States has had an influx of immigrants from South Asia and Southeast Asia, such as from the Indian subcontinent, the Philippines, Korea, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and mainland China (Kuo & RoysircarSodowsky, 1999; Rumbaut, 1997), contributing to a 35% increase among Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the 1990’s (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1999). This phenomenon of “new immigrants” or post-World War II immigrants from Asia and Latin America and the large birth rate of U.S.-born second generation children have begun to change U.S. society with the visibility of people of color who are different from even those who have been traditionally considered as minorities. New immigrants constitute the majority of immigrants to this country (Rumbaut, 1997). However, research has largely neglected them, perhaps because of their relative youth due to their post-1965 immigration; the obscurity of census and official data on them; and the relative invisibility of immigrants of color until recent times. There is limited research, both conceptual and empirical, that examines the acculturation process of immigrants, the ethnic identification process of children of immigrants, and the effects of such adaptations on their stress-related mental health. We attempt to address these issues conceptually and in measurement terms with regard to Asian Americans.

A Response to “Social Privilege, Social Justice, and Group Counseling: An Inquiry”: Social Privilege: Counselors' Competence With Systemically Determined Inequalities

The literature is extensive about explanatory behavioral and social effects with an individual or micro focus. A somewhat less programmatic literature exits in social justice that considers systemic or macro factors: for example, mental health service and its structures that perpetuate inequity and disparity in service delivery. Social privilege arises from macro-level environments wherein certain social identities of race, class, gender, sexuality, and religion are considered normative with perceived natural rights, whereas those not thus privileged are questioned and discredited. The article approaches privilege as a therapist attitudinal variable, a subjective experience as well as perception of entitlement, which can be remediated through the practice of multicultural counseling competencies. As a multicultural competency, group therapists are expected to learn about groups with different social classes, their privileged cultures and feelings of entitlement as opposed to marginalized cultures, and their feelings of disempowerment and disidentification with privileged classes. Group therapists are encouraged to examine their own values, biases, and assumptions that emanate from their middle-class, higher-education standing and to advocate against counseling dynamics that marginalize and oppress group therapy members who are different from other group members as well as from the leader. Social privilege and multicultural competencies are inversely related.

“Born Black and Male”: Counseling leaders’ self-discovery of strengths

Africentric/Afrocentric psychology frames the interview findings on five African-American male leaders in a racial, ethnic, and culturally diverse counseling association. The consensual qualitative research method was used to extrapolate themes from the five interviews. Africentric cultural strengths suggested in the themes are (a) autogeny, (b) primacy of the person in the context of community, (c) consubstantiality of primordial substance, (d) perpetual evolution, and (e) living forever. Two themes related to counseling practice are (f) social justice and (g) cultural empathy. Common trends in statements across interviews are illustrated with rich quotations and summaries. Although the framework of continental African world view facilitated understanding a few African-American male counseling leaders, the study evidences a larger universal human dimension of individuals’ pain, resilience, self-discovery of strengths, and leadership bound to a collective self-concept by which leadership can take place both individually and collectively.

First responder mental healthcare: Evidence-based prevention, postvention, and treatment.

Recent national tragedies of hurricanes, mass shootings, gun violence in schools, wild fires, and mudslides have drawn our attention to the trauma of affected individuals and schoolchildren, but less to the stressors of first responders. While commonly regaled as “heroes,” responders face a scarcity of systemic and tailored mental health support. First responders are susceptible to witnessing a wide array of traumatic events, often in their own communities, that contribute to their stress (Benedek, Fullerton, & Ursano, 2007; Castellano & Plionis, 2006; Kleim & Westphal, 2011). This article critiques systemic resources for first responders’ mental healthcare; addresses their personal-social characteristics as well as workplace cultural stigma about help-seeking attitudes; and includes a needs assessment of first responders’ resilience that was conducted by one of the authors (Roysircar, 2008a). Using this evidence-based practice knowledge about first responders, the authors present three hypothetical vignettes that highlight the different challenges that commonly effect first responders and recommend interventions. The authors advocate for access to specialized resources that enhance first responders’ preparedness for a potentially traumatic event (i.e., prevention education); increase their coping skills and social connections after an event (i.e., postvention service); and provide ongoing mental healthcare (i.e., treatment) that is culturally tailored to first responders’ unique needs arising from their work context and identity.

Haitian Children's Resilience and Vulnerability Assessed With House-Tree-Person (HTP) Drawings

House–Tree–Person (HTP) Test drawings by children (N = 131; age range 6–15) in Haiti were studied statistically to assess for resilience and vulnerability post-2010 Haiti earthquake. Consistent with ecological theory, item contents indicated that resilience was derived from systems of home life and familial relationships, reflections on self-other interactions, interpersonal relationships, and connectedness with the environment, and that vulnerability was derived from living without external systemic support, placing a child at risk for an intrapersonal life of negative representation of self, self-in-relation to others, and personal-social attitudes. A pilot qualitative study developed item criteria with themes of resilience and vulnerability. While exploratory analyses of the scoring system led to the formation of resilience (RES) and Vulnerability (VUL) items (31 items) that were scored as present or not present (1 or 0) in the sample’s drawings. For the study, several raters scored the same participant’s 3 drawings, which showed fair interrater reliability through ICCs, moderate Cronbach’s alphas, and a strong negative correlation between RES and VUL. A multivariate regression analysis for RES and VUL showed differences by age and sex, as well as trends in RES and VUL across time for participant locations that were impacted differently by postearthquake conditions. Over 50% of participants had significantly different RES and VUL scores that were not due to measurement error, suggesting differential individual profiles. The majority had higher RES scores and a few had significantly higher VUL scores, showing that resilience was the cultural norm for Haitian children. It is recommended that vulnerable Haitian children would benefit from strength-based resilience counseling for trauma. An innovative study applied the controversial HTP tool in a way that has not been done before to assess Haitian children who are exposed to continuous trauma. The study is important by virtue of examining over time the applicability and scope of the nonverbal HTP test to assess for adaptation and maladaptation in a non-English speaking and socioculturally different community in the Caribbean.