Recognizing the true norm: Commentary on “Toward defining, measuring, and evaluating LGBT cultural competence for psychologists”.

Abstract

In this commentary, the author discusses the difference between aspirational guidelines and enforceable standards of professional practice and argues that the 28 recommendations proposed by Boroughs, Bedoya, O’Cleirigh, and Safren (Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 22, 2015) contain both. The ultimate goal of developing cultural competence training and evaluating cultural competence is to create a professional psychology workforce of people committed to the lifelong practice of self-evaluation when it comes to the inevitable biases engrained through learning and development within the limitations of our own cultures. The damage of decades of marginalization of sexual and gender minority communities can be ameliorated by improvements in multicultural training and by establishing an expectation that adequate representation of sexual and gender minority participants be included in research on therapeutic practices that will be recognized as treatments with empirical support. The development of criteria for instruction in cultural competence at all levels of psychological training will improve our research and clinical training to be inclusive of sexual minority and gender identity minority individuals, rather than continuing considerations of this population as an out-group.