Lillian Comas-Díaz
Puerto Rican and American clinical psychologist working on multicultural therapy
Clinical psychologist who developed ethnocultural and multicultural approaches to psychotherapy, with attention to women of colour and racial trauma. She helped create an APA division on ethnic minority issues and received the APA Gold Medal for Life Achievement in 2019.
Why this person matters
Comas-Díaz is a main author in the field of culturally informed therapy. Her books and edited volumes gave clinicians guidance on ethnicity, gender and racism in treatment. She worked within a wider group of ethnic minority psychologists who built APA structures for this work, including editors and co-authors such as Beverly Greene.
Main contributions
Ethnocultural and multicultural therapy
She developed ethnocultural approaches to psychotherapy, described in the APA training video Ethnocultural Psychotherapy (1996) and in Multicultural Care: A Clinician's Guide to Cultural Competence (2012). Her research on racial trauma links it to sociopolitical and historical events.
Women of colour in therapy
She edited Women of Color: Integrating Ethnic and Gender Identities in Psychotherapy (1994) and co-edited Clinical Guidelines in Cross-Cultural Mental Health (1988) with Beverly Greene.
Building APA structures
She helped create APA Division 45, served as its first treasurer and was first editor-in-chief of its journal, Cultural Diversity and Mental Health. She worked at APA from 1984.
Context and limits
The sources used here are biographies that list her publications and roles. They do not evaluate treatment outcomes of the approaches she describes or report criticism of them. Sources give different full names for Division 45, so the profile uses the number only.
In your introductory course
Treatment and therapy.Appears in therapy and culture chapters as a source for culturally informed treatment. Students meet her when courses cover racial trauma and multicultural counselling.
Related course reading: Psychology 2e, section 16.1. This is course context rather than a biographical source.
Years of active work
- 1979
Completed a PhD in clinical psychology at the University of Massachusetts and began work in Yale's psychiatry department.
- 1986
Joined the George Washington University School of Medicine, where she is a clinical professor, and began leading the Transcultural Mental Health Institute.
- 2012
Published Multicultural Care: A Clinician's Guide to Cultural Competence.
- 2019
Received the APA Gold Medal Award for Life Achievement in the Practice of Psychology.
Sources
- Psychology's Feminist Voices, Lillian Comas-DíazSociety or association. Institutional biography inspected.
- Wikipedia, Lillian Comas-DíazReference work. Reference article inspected.