Mental Health Care Practitioners’ Construing about non-White people: Implications for Cultural Competence and the Therapeutic Alliance

Australia is a country known for its multicultural population. The country has a broad range of visa schemes and a rapidly increasing overall intake of migrants. Australia thus provides a particularly rich case study of a migrant-receiving country undergoing rapid transformation. This diversity results in the need for mental health care systems and practitioners to adapt to a range of health and wellbeing needs of individuals and groups across cultural, linguistic, and ethnic backgrounds. This goal is challenged by the prevailing and overarching sociopolitical and ethnocultural construct of Whiteness, which is present in Australia, other Western nations and much of the world. To both acknowledge and understand this construct, and its consequences, within the context of mental health and wellbeing, this thesis examined the ways in which mental health practitioners in Australia construe non-White people. The research also sought to ascertain the links between practitioners’ construals of Whiteness and their cultural competence as well as their therapeutic alliance with non-White clients. This research is important as it helps to expose the modes by which Whiteness may influence construing and may provide more clarity on how Whiteness, its invisibility and processes work in the context of mental health care.