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The Eighth Annual
Diversity
Challenge 2008:
Race, Culture, and Trauma
Sponsored
by the Institute for the Study and Promotion of Race
and Culture
OCTOBER
3-4, 2008
Boston
College
Proposal Submission Deadline: April 21, 2008
The Institute for the Study and Promotion of Race and Culture at Boston College invites you to join us for the Institute's eighth 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:
Mental
Health
Treatment
Assessment
Service Delivery
Education
Community Programs
Policy
Advocacy
Training
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. The focus of this year’s Diversity Challenge is addressing the intersections among race, culture, and trauma in a variety of domains and by means of a variety of interventions and research inquiries.
We envision 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.
Suggestions
for Proposals
We invite proposals that reflect some aspect of your experiences in treating, teaching, studying, or intervening to understand how race and culture influence the lives of individuals. Although the proposals may focus on any aspect of trauma, all proposals should demonstrate a clear integration of race and culture. Presentations should focus on community activities and activism, developments in research, professional practice, education, and/or social justice initiatives as they pertain to race, culture, and trauma. Topics may include, but are not limited to, applications of theory, community and school initiatives, activism, as well as current research and practice related to (a) understanding the trauma pertaining to race and culture of diverse racial and ethnic cultural age groups in the United States, (b) improving the quality of life for children, adolescents, and families who have been exposed to traumatic events, (c) community and grassroots initiatives pertaining to addressing the impact of trauma and violence, and (d) implementing and evaluating innovative and culturally competent interventions in traditional and nontraditional environments. Strongest consideration will be given to proposals that deal directly with the 2008 Diversity Challenge theme, the examination of the intersections among race, culture, and trauma across the lifespan.
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