Understanding the cultural and professional identity development of bilingual (English-Hindi/Urdu) South Asian American/Canadian mental health clinicians
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Language plays a central role in how individuals relate, communicate, and connect with others, as well as in self-understanding and expression (Altarriba & Santiago-Rivera, 1994; Licciardello & Damigella, 2013). For bi/multilingual individuals, language can also influence the development and understanding of one’s cultural identity (Germain, 2004; Lee, 2013; Lu, 2010; Mercuri, 2012). Moreover, it has been posited that language can impact the therapeutic experience and the healing process in psychotherapy. Shared language among clinicians and patients has been found to contribute to developing the therapeutic alliance (Nguyen, 2014) and allow patients to express their emotions and memories better (Costa, 2010; Kokaliari et al., 2013). However, there remains limited understanding of and support for bilingual therapists' cultural and professional identity development journeys (Consoli & Flores, 2020; Johal, 2017; Verdinelli & Biever, 2009). This is especially the case for English-Hindi/Urdu-speaking clinicians in the United States of America (U.S.) and Canada, leaving them an underserved group despite the essential services they provide to one of the fastest-growing minoritized communities (U.S. Census Bureau, 2023). Using a qualitative design, the study explored the lived experiences of eleven first- and second-generation immigrant bilingual (English-Hindi/Urdu) South Asian American/Canadian mental health providers to better understand their cultural and professional identity development. Moustakas’ (1994) Transcendental Phenomenological approach was employed to gain a deeper understanding of the essence of participants' experiences. A systematic thematic analysis was used to identify the essence and themes of the experiences. A total of six themes emerged to explain the phenomena of cultural identity development among participants, which include changes to cultural identity, development of cultural identity, languages’ role in cultural identity, honoring heritage, South Asian: a functional identity, and valuing connection. A total of seven themes emerged to explain the phenomena of professional identity development among participants, which include blending cultural self into professional identity, incorporated a social justice orientation on bi/multilingual clinical work, use language as a tool in therapy, overall clinical skills benefitted from bi/multilingual professional experiences, felt affirmed and gratified through bi/multilingual clinical work, encountered systemic struggles, and burdened to take initiative. The findings expand the current understanding of cultural identity development of bi/multilingual (English-Hindi/Urdu) South Asian Americans/Canadians. It provides insight on how to better support this community, including potential ways to expand the current South Asian American cultural identity model (Ibrahim et al., 1997) and recommendations for mental health clinicians working with clients in this community. It contributes to the field’s current literature on bilingual psychotherapists by exploring the understudied community of South Asian American English-Hindi/Urdu-speaking clinicians in the U.S./Canada. The findings from the study provide valuable insights into how to better support such providers, which in turn may aid in increasing accessibility to qualified mental health professionals to serve the broader bilingual South Asian American community. Findings offer an understanding of improving training opportunities and professional support for bilingual mental health providers.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.007 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.021 | 0.014 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.007 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".