Moving From Contemplation to Preparation: Is Counseling Psychology Ready to Embrace Culturally Responsive Prevention?

Abstract

The confluence of prevention, multicultural competence and cultural responsiveness, and social justice is embryonic but holds much promise. The author uses the stages of change model to heighten awareness of how counseling psychologists are situated to provide well-developed system-level interventions and to examine the organizational and individual barriers to doing such work. The author then highlights the benefits for counseling psychology of engaging in preventive interventions. Strategies are provided to enhance the integration of prevention in training programs' curriculum in both the applied and research elements of the program. By providing learning opportunities that expose trainees to community interventions with disenfranchised populations, counseling psychology's commitment to social justice and multiculturalism will be more fully realized.