Therapy’s racial gap: The urgent need for diverse therapists

By Marlene F. Watson It is natural and normal for a person seeking mental health help to want their therapist to understand them. It is difficult now for people to find a therapist, but people of color who want a therapist who understands their experience are having an especially hard time of it. That’s a problem. In an ideal world, the race of a person’s therapist shouldn’t matter. But anyone who is paying attention knows this is not an ideal world. Race plays a role in most human interactions, and there are few interactions more human than therapy. Race is a factor for all of us in how we see and measure ourselves, and it’s a factor in how we see each other. Denying that closes off the therapeutic relationship before it can even get started. Most therapists are White& – 73 percent of them. Only 8 percent are Latinx, even though Latinx people make up 18.9 percent of the population. Only 4 percent are Black, even though Black people are 12.6 percent of the population. Clients who speak only Spanish, Cantonese or Mandarin — the three most popular non-English languages in this country — have even fewer options. For...