Immigrant Collaborative

The Immigrant Collaborative aims to identify, support, promote, and advocate for culturally responsive and contextually relevant strategies to help immigrants, their families, and their providers. The Immigrant Collaborative seeks to address issues impacting all immigrants, regardless of their documentation status. This special interest group is dedicated to utilizing best practices in research, training, evaluations, and service to enhance the mental health and well-being of immigrant communities, while also emphasizing their valuable contributions to society. Moreover, the Immigrant Collaborative is committed to social justice and fostering strong relationships through effective multi-disciplinary collaboration and communication among researchers, practitioners, community organizations and institutions that serve immigrant communities and through advocating for immigrant rights and protections. The purpose of this special interest group aligns with the overall mission of NLPA to provide equitable inclusive treatment for the Latinx/e population. 

1)     Clinical/Forensic Team: The Clinical/Forensic Team seeks to identify, promote, and develop culturally competent and empirically supported strategies to work more effectively with immigrant populations in clinical and forensic settings. This team will discuss and clarify clinical and forensic considerations and guidelines for the provision of mental health services to Latinx/e immigrant communities. Documents that respond to this goal will be placed on a Google Document on the NLPA website. Once installed, NLPA members will be invited to add resources.  This team is led by Dr. Cassandra Bailey, PhD [email protected] 

2)     Clinical Team: The Clinical Team seeks to identify, promote, and develop culturally humble and competent clinical practices to more effectively support and advocate for undocumented, documented, and mixed-status immigrant community members. This team will discuss and clarify clinical considerations based on research and lived experiences for the provision of mental health services that promote an understanding of social inequalities and amplify the strengths of immigrant Latine/x communities. The clinical team will engage in social justice action to advocate for socially just and culturally responsive mental health care (treatment and prevention) at different levels.  This team is led by Dr. Susana A. López, PhD ([email protected]) and Dr. Frances M. Chiliquinga, Psy.D. ([email protected]).

3)     Research Team:  The Research Team seeks to foster mutually respectful conversations and collaboration among researchers, educators and practitioners to move research to practice (and vice versa) and create actionable recommendations to support migrant youth, adults and families and the professionals who serve them. The Research Team invites participation across stages of professional development (e.g., undergraduate and graduate students, post-doctoral trainees, and across years of professional experiences) and especially welcomes participants who may not see themselves as researchers. We seek to work together to conduct research that informs training, policy and practice, to create a supportive environment for collaborative projects, to troubleshoot common barriers to research with immigrant communities, and to disseminate new and upcoming research within the Immigrant Collaborative SIG and the NLPA community. Moreover, we seek to integrate this work into the larger field of psychology and reach multi-disciplinary audiences, such as psychologists, attorneys, and healthcare providers, who serve immigrants but might not traditionally access work in immigration. The contact person for this section is Dr. Diana Formoso ([email protected]). 

4)     The Resources Team: The Resources Team aims to identify resources for trainees, researchers, practitioners, and community members who work with or are interested in working with immigrants. The team is currently comprising a list of psychologists across the United States who offer immigration evaluation services and a list of graduate training opportunities (e.g., graduate programs, predoctoral internships, postdoctoral fellowships) for students interested in building expertise with immigrant populations.  This list will be published and distributed on the NLPA website. The Resources Team is co-led by Isabel López ([email protected]) and Dr. Adrian J. Hernandez ([email protected]). 

Afro-Latinx

Open Call for SIG Chairs

The Afro-Latinx SIG seeks to address the psychological implications of the historical and presistent invisibility, marginalization, and social exclusion of Latinx of African descent, also known as Afro-descendientes, Afro-Latinx or Black Latinx. The relationships between racism, poor health outcomes, psychological distress, trauma symptoms, poor self-concept, and lower life satisfaction have been increasingly reported among Afro-Latinxs. In collaboration with NLPA we aim to do the work of supporting the Afro-Latinx community by bringing visibility to these experiences and their consequences, while fostering affirming and supportive spaces for Afro-Latinx, and leading the way in advocating and organizing social justice efforts that promote the well-being of Latinx of African descent.