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OPPORTUNITIES: The 8th Annual Diversity Challenge: A Call for Proposals - Deadline April 21, 2008.
The Institute for the Study and Promotion of Race and Culture at Boston College invites you to join the Institute's 8th annual national conference in Boston, a city known for its struggles and efforts to address issues of racial and ethnic cultural diversity in U.S. society.
The Institute was founded in 2000 at Boston College, under the direction of Dr. Janet E. Helms, to promote the assets and address the societal conflicts associated with race and culture in theory and research, mental health practice, education, business, and society at
large. The Institute solicits, designs, and distributes effective interventions with a proactive, practical focus. Each year the Institute addresses a racial or cultural issue that could benefit from a pragmatic, scholarly, or grassroots focus through its Diversity
Challenge conference.
The theme of Diversity Challenge 2008 is the examination of the intersections among race, culture, and trauma across the lifespan. Areas of emphasis include mental health, treatment, assessment, service delivery, education, community programs, policy, advocacy and training.
The Institute envisions an interdisciplinary forum in which a variety of perspectives are explored and scientists, practitioners, and social activists can interact with each other with respect to this important theme. Proposals are welcome from researchers, practitioners, educators, community organizations, advocacy and activist groups, medical service providers, employee assistance personnel, government agencies, spiritual healers, and providers of community services. Work groups focused on racial or cultural micro aggressions are encouraged. Critical perspectives and creative ideas concerning the role of race and culture and trauma in the lives of individuals are welcome.
Traumatic and extremely stressful life events contribute to disruptive emotional changes in individuals’ mental states and their overall quality of life (Foa, 1997). It is estimated that 14% of individuals in the U.S., at some time in their lives, develop Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), a condition that develops after experiencing or witnessing a particularly threatening, tragic, or dangerous event (Kessler, Sonnega, Bromet, Hughes, & Nelson, 1995). Approximately another 25% of individuals experience significant emotional and interpersonal difficulties after a traumatic event. Missing from the estimates are the roles that race and culture serve in increasing or decreasing potentially disruptive emotional experiences. Mental health professionals and social service agencies have begun to focus attention on racist events and cultural discrimination as types of traumatic events that can be as psychologically debilitating as natural disasters or physical abuse. Psychologists, social workers, and mental health researchers have called for improved conceptualizations of the traumatic effects of incidents of discrimination based on race or ethnicity and mental health interventions with racial or cultural trauma as a focus.
Also, race and culture may have significant effects on the experience of stressful life events as they are typically conceptualized. Trauma scientists and practitioners often study and treat trauma without considering the interactions of culture and race on the experiences of trauma victims. For example, the ongoing mental health concerns of
People of Color, displaced from one community to another following Hurricane Katrina, illustrate the importance of addressing culture and race in service delivery. In the July 2005 edition of /The Counseling Psychologist/, several articles explicitly discussed and defined racist events (both overt and covert), and made cogent proposals for advancing
the field toward incorporating race-based trauma into mental health service delivery and research.
Terry Sass or Janet E. Helms, Ph.D.
Kisha Bazelais Boston College, Executive Director
Boston College, ISPRC
318 Campion Hall Guerda Nicolas, Ph.D.
140 Commonwealth Avenue Boston College, Associate Director
Chestnut Hill, MA 02467
Tel: 617-552-2482
Fax: 617-552-1003
For registration and other administrative questions, e-mail isprc@bc.edu.
For all other queries, including submission questions, e-mail diversity.challenge@bc.edu .
For up-to-date information about the Challenge, visit our website www.bc.edu/isprc.
Source: Boston College ISPRC
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