Clinical Psychology Internship for Underrepresented Students

Clinical Psychology Internship for Underrepresented Students: An Inclusive Approach Toward Higher Education is a much needed resource, proposing a high school pipeline program for clinical psychology, Taking Flight, based on psychological theory, social justice and equity principles and informed by the students it serves. Drs. Kim and Johal have thoughtfully and empathically developed a program that provides support, information and tools for both students and programs to foster the interest and development of a more diverse and representative pool of mental health practitioners. -Fred Millan PhD, ABPP, NCC, is a bilingual Latinx Counseling Psychologist. He is the director of the Graduate Mental Health Counseling Program, interim chair and professor of Psychology at SUNY Old Westbury, and former president, National Latinx Psychological Association. What an absolute jewel of a resource to help recruit diverse high school students into psychology! Taking Flight can be used as a main or supplementary textbook for a variety of audiences, including in high school, undergraduate or graduate courses. Its primary aim is to cultivate aspirations to advanced degrees and careers in psychology! The curriculum was developed over years of hands-on experimentation. I strongly recommend this splendid and valuable tool! -Melba J. T. Vasquez, PhD, ABPP, former president, American Psychological Association. Taking Flight comes as a gift for the future of the field in responding to the psychological residuals of the nexus of COVID 19 and racial pandemics; moving us beyond the complexities of systemic structural racism toward new insights and tools for collective/individual wellness. Increasing the number of diverse or underrepresented persons in mental heal fields is not enough; such scholars must bring forth cultural wisdom and science that furthers the effectiveness in serving BPIOC communities and all other communities. Clearly more is needed. Taking Flight is a blueprint for actualizing cultural accountability and humility. The American Psychological Association has reported similar demographic data for years that only 20% of all psychologists identify as people of color, which is probably an inverse relation to those being served. Taking Flight has the capacity of countering this data, as well as the potential for interrupting the school-to-prison pipeline that many underrepresented youth faces; thus, serving as a professional lifeline for the field. Taking Flight should be institutionalized to ensure that the field mirrors the communities being served and increases its efficacy through such cultural encounters. -Theopia Jackson, PhD, chair, Clinical Psychology Degree Program, Saybrook University; president, The Association of Black Psychologists, Inc. As a faculty and administrator of color, I have often wondered about ways to promote inclusion and the advancement of interns who come from historically underrepresented backgrounds. Whereas such interns/students are often seen as factors that add to the education and training experiences of those from dominant cultural backgrounds, specific modules and frameworks to center the identity and conversations about historically underrepresented interns/students have been vastly missing. Dr. Kim and Dr. Johal's work provides us with that missing piece which puts the critical centering on experiences of the often forgotten voices. Dr. Hideko Sera, Morehouse College, Atlanta, USA