Culturally Responsive Counseling for Asian Americans: Clinician Perspectives

Research has consistently found acute mental health treatment disparities among Asian Americans. One proposed reason for the underutilization of mental health services by Asian Americans is that available services are not culturally competent. This exploratory study presents qualitative data gathered from interviews with professional counselors who serve Asian American clients. Findings revealed significant barriers to counseling due to cultural stigma and shame, suppression of emotions, and communication gaps between clients and counselors. In response, clinicians frequently made adjustments to therapeutic approaches to accommodate the cultural beliefs and practices of clients and families. Implications for practice and research are discussed.     

Critical Issues in Teaching a Multicultural Counseling Course

A Multicultural Counseling course (MCC) brings unique challenges and rewards to both instructors and students. Given its unique challenges, the process of teaching a MCC is as important as, or even more important than, the content. Drawing from extant literature and the authors’ experiences, this paper discusses such topics as what to teach, how to teach, classroom dynamics, instructors’ issues, and students’ issues to provide a concise, practical, and comprehensive framework for teaching such difficult but essential courses.     

Gravity-oriented microfluidic device for uniform and massive cell spheroid formation

We propose a simple method for forming massive and uniform three-dimensional (3-D) cell spheroids in a multi-level structured microfluidic device by gravitational force. The concept of orienting the device vertically has allowed spheroid formation, long-term perfusion, and retrieval of the cultured spheroids by user-friendly standard pipetting. We have successfully formed, perfused, and retrieved uniform, size-controllable, well-conditioned spheroids of human embryonic kidney 293 cells (HEK 293) in the gravity-oriented microfluidic device. We expect the proposed method will be a useful tool to study in-vitro 3-D cell models for the proliferation, differentiation, and metabolism of embryoid bodies or tumours.