From Philly.Com Magazine:

Therapy and race

Does the patient from a minority group benefit by seeking out a professional with a similar background? Some say picking a black, Hispanic or gay practitioner is important.

By Carolyn Feibel

FOR THE INQUIRER

Janice Warner, a 67-year-old social worker and therapist whose mother was white and father was American Indian, will never forget the teasing she heard as a child on the school playground. “You’re going to scalp me!” her classmates would shout before running off. Or, “There’s no Indians around anymore!”

It would be years before Warner, who now lives in Plainfield, N.J., could fully explore those experiences and how they affected her psyche. Though her first therapist, a white man, was very helpful, “when it got to race he was a little out to lunch,” Warner recalled. By the time she found a Jewish therapist who seemed, as a result of his own experiences, to understand the subtleties of race and identity, Warner had children of her own – who were feeling hurt by murals in the school library that made Indians look like apes. Her therapist helped her deal with the pain that her children’s troubles brought up – and how she might approach the librarian and talk about the problem.

Warner’s mixed experience with psychotherapy is not uncommon, particularly for minority groups. Blacks, Latinos, Asians – and, especially now, Arab Americans – who think about entering treatment must grapple with feelings of identity and trust. They are often concerned that therapy is a “white” or elitist institution that will abuse them or mislabel them as “crazy” or “paranoid.” Experts say many minorities, especially African Americans, make special efforts to find a therapist of the same racial background, who they feel can better understand their experiences of racism, discrimination and minority culture. Gays and lesbians seek therapists who can relate to their situation as a sexual minority.

Warner said her own experiences years ago taught her the importance of ethnic and cultural issues when she sees clients for therapy. “I tend to think very much in terms of history, where they grew up and what was happening racially where they grew up,” she said. “With some African American clients, they grew up where or when schools were still segregated. . . .How did that affect them?”

Most therapists understand the concerns of minority patients, but they also face a demographic reality: There are relatively few minority psychologists and psychiatrists, so demand outstrips supply. HMO rules and clinic procedures can also make it difficult for patients to request a therapist with a particular background.

“Philadelphia actually has a wide range of community mental-health clinics,” said Faye Dixon, a black psychologist who works at Eastern Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute at the Medical College of Pennsylvania Hospital. “But when someone is specifically looking for a psychologist or psychiatrist of color, they’ve got to go far.”

African Americans are less likely than whites to go into those professions – or, for that matter, to go to a therapist – because they tend to turn to their family or church minister when they need emotional guidance and support.

“I have heard black people say, ‘Black people don’t do that,’ ” said Barbara Williamson, 50, an African American consultant from Gulph Mills who sees a white therapist. “Some people say, ‘I don’t want someone telling me what to do.’ Well, that’s not what therapy is all about.”

Kimberly E. Walker, a black psychiatrist with offices in Bala Cynwyd, Center City and South Philadelphia, said more and more AfricanAmericans are getting interested in therapy, in part because of the efforts of school counselors, consumer magazines such as Essence and Ebony, and television hosts such as Montel Williams, who invite therapists on their shows.

Still, Walker said, “therapy is to some extent seen as ‘white.’ ” African Americans, she said, have not forgotten Tuskegee, the 40-year federal study in which black men in Alabama were identified as having syphilis but never told and never given treatment. If a psychiatrist prescribes drugs, “some people are concerned they might be being experimented on.”

Members of other minority groups bring their own group histories to psychotherapy – if they come at all.