KCTI 20 Year Anniversary Fundraiser

There is a deep lack of capacity in the “helping fields” to respond to the needs of culturally diverse communities. In our experience, partnering with educational institutions - which train most local Marriage and Family Therapists - most students are white. All students, whether white or of the global majority, are trained by mainly white teaching staff, learn theories developed based on work done with white people, and participate in internships and practicums where most of the client base is white. Students of the global majority are historically excluded in every possible way. This plays out in Minnesota as mental health professionals of the global majority, those who are perhaps best equipped to provide the clinical and therapeutic supports to address many types of violence and trauma occurring in our communities, are largely underrepresented. While 79% of Minnesota’s statewide population is white, 88% of its mental health workforce is white. Conversely, people of the global majority comprise smaller shares of the mental health professions than they do in the statewide population (Minnesota Department of Health, 2022). We know this is a similar story in the fields of education, social work, health care, juvenile justice, and other fields seeking training support from KCTI.

We know mental health workers of color carry significantly higher caseloads of clients of the global majority and often the most complex cases. However, most new providers do not know how clients who look like them will respond to therapy techniques they were taught in school. The learning curve is steep and the stakes are high, as people of the global majority are already less likely to seek or stay in care and have distrust in health care systems. As isolated mental health professionals of the global majority try to meet the increased demand for culturally specific mental health services, they become more susceptible to burnout and compassion fatigue.

Incoming professionals face additional structural barriers including resources to cover fees, unpaid practicum requirements, and unfamiliarity with a system historically designed to exclude people of the global majority. Lack of racial diversity in the field limits their ability to provide support for people of the global majority, particularly in relation to historical trauma, oppression, and the intersectionality of identities. Providers and clinics of the global majority are spread out, over worked, and struggling to change a system largely inaccessible to them.

Lastly, Black and other mental health practitioners of the global majority lack their own space where they can just be. In integrated spaces, they face the dominance of white culture and unwritten rules for engaging in those spaces. This is especially true in Minnesota where 82% of the population is white.