Eliminating Race-Based Mental Health Disparities

Editor Monnica T. Williams, PhD, ABPP, is a board-certified clinical psychologist and associate professor at the University of Ottawa in the school of psychology, where she holds the Canadian Research Chair for Mental Health Disparities. She received her master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Virginia, where she conducted research in the areas of major mental illness, tests and measurement, and ethnic differences. She has started clinics in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut, and a refugee mental health clinic in Kentucky. Her clinical work and research focus on African American mental health, culture, trauma, and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

Williams serves on the scientific advisory board of the International OCD Foundation, where she cofounded their diversity council. She is on the editorial board of several scientific journals, and is currently associate editor of the Behavior Therapist and New Ideas in Psychology. Williams has published over one hundred peer-reviewed articles and book chapters focused on psychopathology and cultural differences. She gives diversity trainings nationally. Her work has been featured in several major media outlets, including NPR, CNN, and The New York Times.

Editor Daniel C. Rosen, PhD, is chair and professor in the department of counseling and health psychology at Bastyr University, and director of The Daniel K. Church Center for Social Justice and Diversity. He earned a PhD in counseling psychology from Arizona State University after completing his predoctoral internship at the Center for Multicultural Training in Psychology at Boston Medical Center/Boston University School of Medicine. He completed his postdoctoral fellowship in the behavioral medicine program at Cambridge Health Alliance/Harvard Medical School. Rosen’s scholarship is focused in multicultural psychology, and has explored issues of social justice in mental health, addressing disparities in access to and quality of mental health services; and anti-Semitism-related stress. He has a private practice in Seattle, WA.

Editor Jonathan W. Kanter, PhD, received his doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Washington in 2002, and then moved to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee where he spent several years collaborating closely with members of the Black, Latinx, and Muslim communities on issues of social and political activism (including police brutality and voter rights), racism and discrimination, and culturally appropriate treatments of depression. In 2013, Kanter came to the University of Washington to direct the Center for the Science of Social Connection (CSSC), where he approaches projects with a contextual behavioral science (CBS) model that integrates disciplines—including evolution science, neuroscience, anthropology, and psychology—within a behavioral science foundation. Kanter is regularly invited to give talks and workshops nationally and internationally on topics of interest to the Center, including anti-racism workshops, workshops for therapists on how to improve psychotherapy relationships and help clients with relational problems, and culturally tailored behavioral treatments for depression.