(soft instrumental music)
My name is Wei-Chin Hwang
and I'm a professor of clinical psychology here at CMC
and the director of The Cultural Influences
on Mental Health Center.
Our research center focuses on conducting high quality
and cutting edge research examining how culture
influences various aspects of mental health,
including the prevalence of psychiatric disorders,
the etiology and course of mental illness,
communication styles, and differences in expression
and distress, diagnostic accuracy, access in utilization
and mental health services,
and issues of cultural competency
and how to we culturally adapt and modify psychotherapy
to be more effective for diverse populations.
Studying cultural issues and mental health
is really important because the U.S. is growing
but it's becoming so diverse,
and there's just a lot more ethnic minority groups now.
We need to start developing more culturally competent
treatments and professionals in order to treat
these people who might not be receiving adequate treatment.
I think it's important to study cultural issues
because we want to be able to offer
every citizen and every resident the same aquitable care.
When there's disparities in cultural attitudes,
when there's disparities in how comfortable people feel
seeking treatment or accepting treatment,
then they're not getting the same care
and it's our job to try and rectify that.
Our research center is different from other
psychology labs in three primary ways.
First is our focus on clinical issues,
second is a focus on cultural issues,
and third is the focus on conducting applied clinical
research.
So we get research assistants from all over
the Claremont colleges who are interested
in going into a clinical community psychology.
Some of them become familiar with our lab
because they know other students who have worked
in the lab before.
Others are just interested in these issues
and they come finding us.
One of the greatest experiences that students get
is the fact that they get to work with these professors
basically one on one.
They get a lot of face time with professors
that they wouldn't get in the classroom,
and they also get great research experience
from conceptualizing a research study
and then submitting an IRB, to actually making
up the methods and the materials,
and then all the way up through contributing
to a final publication.
They get involved in all aspects of the research process,
they have a lot of responsibility in pushing
the projects forward.
Their energy and drive and curiosity help with our
brainstorming sessions to help develop our ideas,
help modify our questionnaires,
and they have a lot of energy to go out there
and do clinical interviews and talk to different people
around campus, and conduct focus groups
to really flesh out our research proposals and ideas
so that we can carry them out in an effective manner.
Working in this lab has really helped me with
my future plans
because not only has it made me a stronger candidate
for graduate school, but I've also been able to
actually work on publications,
I've gotten research experience that I wouldn't have
gotten elsewhere, and in addition,
Professor Hwang's been really helpful when it's come
to prepping my materials as an applicant.
He's helped me prep for interviews,
he's helped me look over my personal statement,
and overall, I think it's been really great help
in terms of where I want to go next.
You hit the ground running in the lab
so that's pretty awesome.
