Projects

Developing and Evaluating a Group Intervnetion Program, NEEDUP, for Deconstructing Implicit Biases in Counsling Students

Normalizing feelings associated with realizing and admitting that you have implicit biases.

Examining your own implicit biases.

Evaluating your implicit biases.

Deconstructing your implicit biases.

Understanding the potential impact of your implicit biases on clients.

Planning action plans to continue discovering your implicit biases and intervening appropriately.

The purpose of this study is to develop and validate the NEEDUP program, a six-week group intervention that aims to reduce counseling students’ implicit biases. Implicit biases are unconscious beliefs that may be manifested as prejudice toward underrepresented individuals. The literature has identified the role of implicit biases in increasing and maintaining health disparities. Given that counselors’ implicit biases may have negative impacts on clients, the present project initiates the development of a group intervention, NEEDUP, for deconstructing implicit biases in counseling students.

Identifying Latent Profiles of Determinants of Mental Health Help-Seeking Among Students of Color and Examining Group Differences in Help-Seeking Intentions at a Minority Serving Institution

Despite the national trend of increased rates of mental health help-seeking among college students in the United States, research indicates that students of color, despite demonstratingevident mental health needs, continue to underutilize mental health services. Additionally, research investigating the mechanisms of mental health help-seeking among this underrepresented student populationremains scarce. The current project adopts the theory of planned behavior as its theoretical framework, asserting that one's intention to perform a behavior (mental health help-seeking) is shaped and influenced by a multitude of factors, such as attitudes (mental health literacy and self-stigma), subjective norms (public stigma), and perceived behavioral control (felt stigma and perceived access to mental health services). Drawing on this theory, the project aims to describe the determinants contributing to mental health help-seeking among college students of color at a minority-serving institution and to discover latent groups of students of color based on those factors, using latent profile analysis. Moreover, after the latent profile analysis, differences in the intention to seek mental health services across the identified latent groups will also be investigated both cross-sectionally and longitudinally, aiming to provide more sophisticated implications for supporting this student population.