President’s Message

President’s Message

By Anna Lau, PhD

Looking back and looking ahead

As SCCAP members, we have been challenged in ways that none of us could have imagined a mere two years ago. As clinicians, researchers, educators, and students, we have been asked to adapt and keep going in service of our clients, trainees, colleagues, families, and communities. And for the most part, we have kept going. We’ve kept going through collective fear and anxiety, social and physical distancing, grieving lost loved ones, and missing so many things that make our personal and professional lives rewarding. At the same time as our reserves are being depleted, we’ve been asked to do more. Children, families, and communities need us more than ever. U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy issued a Surgeon General’s Advisory on Protecting Youth Mental Health alerting the nation to the crisis we know all too well – the pandemic’s unprecedented impacts on the mental health of American youth and families, accelerating trends that began long before COVID-19. Many of us rise to this challenge in our professional work while struggling to support our own children at home. We see you, members, and the SCCAP Board is inspired by you.

We continue to ask how SCCAP is best positioned to support its members to do the work of addressing the national crisis in youth mental health? We are grounded in our mission to enhance the science and practice of clinical child and adolescent psychology by supporting its membership, and the field’s workforce. My wonderful predecessors, Drs. Michael Southam-Gerow and Steve Hinshaw, have set us on a strategic course to focus our efforts on member support. We have affirmed our full commitment to promoting equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in research, evidence-based practice, and training and career development.

Indeed, although the Surgeon General’s advisory focused on COVID-19 pandemic as the accelerant to the youth mental health crisis, increased visibility of racialized violence and hate have led to the recognition of structural racism as the twin pandemic. We are on a journey of national reckoning over the killings of Black Americans by law enforcement (sparked anew by the murder of George Floyd) and bearing witness to COVID-related violence against Asian Americans. Among the groups identified by the Surgeon General as being at higher risk of mental health challenges during the pandemic are racial and ethnic minority youth, LGBTQ+ youth, and youth in immigrant households. SCCAP is in a position to bring members guidance on how best to understand, prevent, and treat youth from minoritized backgrounds, based on science. Although mental health professionals have not typically been prepared or positioned to dismantle the structures that produce and sustain racial disparities, our discipline has now been called to anti-racist action.

When I was considering a run for President of SCCAP, I felt my main contribution could be in service to EDI initiatives in the Division. In my year as President-Elect, it was clear that this work was well under way and the Board has been making big moves. For example, Dr. Andres de Los Reyes, JCCAP Editor, has invested in structural changes by adding two Associate Editors (Drs. Jose Causadias and Noni Gaylord-Harden) and forty editorial consultants inspiring confidence that contributors “will receive a fair evaluation of their work on issues surrounding Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and across multiple levels of inquiry (e.g., group, interpersonal, structural)”. The Board previously added an Officer position for a Member-at-Large for Diversity (first filled by Dr. Erlanger Turner and now Dr. Omar Gudino). To guard against the silo-ing of our EDI efforts, Dr. Gudino has grown the Diversity Committee considerably and designed a sub-committee and liaison structure to ensure that EDI-focused efforts are a shared responsibility across SCCAP. Our programming has reflected a commitment to amplifying inclusive clinical science that informs practice. Our 2022 APA Convention program chaired by Dr. Miya Barnett is focused on Translational Research to Address Determinants of Mental Health Disparities for Children of Color. Our upcoming Clinical Practice Institute will highlight treatment approaches to addressing racialized stress and trauma. Our signature journals (EPCAMH and JCCAP) have recruited Guest Editors for special issues on topics central to EDI. Programming, in and of itself, does not represent structural change. However, it has the potential to shift culture by raising our collective awareness of need and community expectations for inclusive programming. It remains a priority to imagine how to install self-sustaining structural change in SCCAP.

President’s Initiative

This year the Board will engage in organizational assessment to examine our structure, functions, and investments guided by the recently released APA EDI Framework. Given my interest in educational access, I am particularly focused on how SCCAP can widen doors of opportunity for trainees and early career professionals from groups underrepresented in our field. A more diverse workforce of scientists and clinicians is critical to generating advances in culturally-informed, racially equitable practice to meet the profound crisis we face. Our LEAD Institute continues as one mechanism through which we support the development of a diverse pipeline of child psychologists. I’m excited to collaborate with the Board to identify new strategies that can help us work toward this objective. As I look ahead, I see amazing potential. Psychology has remained the fourth most popular major on U.S. college campuses, and it is the second most popular major among Black and Hispanic college students (Integrated Post-secondary Education Data System, 2013). However, students face a daunting structural bottleneck in access to graduate training, particularly in Clinical Psychology Ph.D. programs. In a context of intense competition, compositional diversity generally suffers. Your SCCAP Board has and will continue to focus attention on this problem. More to come…

In service,
Anna Lau