Forging Caminos

This book is yourroadmapto a career as a bilingual mental health provider, with guidance on training programs, conducting research, and building yourpractice. Today over 60 million Latineindividuals live in the US,more than 70 percent of whomare fluent in languages besides English. Disparities in health careare significant among this population, and there is a great need for qualified mental health providers to assess, diagnose, and treat both significant and everyday mental health concerns. Yet, less than 8 percentof psychologists are Latinx, with only 5.5 percentidentifying as Spanish-speaking, and current standards of training, accreditation and competence for bilingual providers is woefully un-standardized. This book aims to chart a new path forward for bilingual mental health in the United States. Editors Maciel Campos, Yessenia Mejia, and Andrés J. Consoli have gathered a prestigious group of scholar-practitioners who describethe current lay of the land in bilingual mental health care, with a focus on thegraduate student and early career professional who is seekinga careeras a bilingual mental health provider. Chapters describe the process of identifying and navigating graduate programs with an emphasis on bilingual approaches to training and care, conducting and publishing bilingual research,internship and post-doctoral training,and building a bilingual mental health practice. The unique experiences of Black and indigenous Latineare given particular emphasis throughout.