Dimensions of perceived importance for African Americans' clinical and counseling psychology doctoral training

There is a great deal of attention being paid to ethnic and cultural diversity in psychology. With the increasing number of individuals being classified as members of ethnically and culturally diverse populations there is an increasing need for mental health professionals to address the unique mental health needs of these populations. To do this it has been suggested that their needs to be a greater number of culturally-competent mental health professionals (in this case African Americans) to assist with addressing the unique mental health needs of the increasing ethnically and culturally diverse populations.;Findings from this study, conducted with 62 faculty members and 31 African American graduate students of Psychology doctoral training program, suggests African American students believe that Multicultural courses and Multicultural practicum experiences are much more important to the training of African American students than do faculty. Implementations of these dimensions may result in increasing the number of African American psychologists.