Psychological Interventions from Six Continents: Culture, Collaboration, and Community

This book presents psychological assessment and intervention in a cultural and relational context. A diverse range of contributors representing six continents and eleven countries write about their therapeutic interventions, all of which break the traditional assessor-as-expert-oriented framework and offer a creative adaptation in service delivery. A Collaborative/Therapeutic Assessment model, including work with immigrant communities, and Indigenous modalities underscore individual and collective case illustrations highlighting equality in the roles of the provider and the receiver of services. The universality and uniqueness of culture are explored as a construct and through case material. Some chapters describe a partnership with a Eurocentric scientific model, while others adopt a purely community method, preserved with Indigenous language and subjective methodology. This volume brings together diverse therapeutic collaborative ideas, and recognizes relational, community, and cultural psychologies as integral to mainstream assessment and intervention literature. This book is essential for psychologists and clinicians internationally and graduate students.

Barbara L. Mercer, PhD, is the former Assessment Program Director and clinical supervisor at WestCoast Children’s Clinic, a community psychology clinic in Oakland, California. She has worked in community mental health throughout her career. She has presented and written about foster care, culture, trauma, and collaborative assessment.

Heather Macdonald, PsyD, has been a licensed clinical psychologist since 2010 and has focused her practice on psychological assessment. She has produced numerous scholarly publications on the interface between culture, social justice, relational ethics, clinical practice, post-colonial thought, and psycho-political theory.

Caroline Purves, PhD, has administered psychological assessments for over 30 years, working with clients of all ages and a variety of ethnicities and backgrounds in the US, Canada, and England.