This resource was selected by SMI Adviser content partners and approved by the SMI Adviser clinical expert team for inclusion in the knowledge base.
The current Multicultural Guidelines: An Ecological Approach to Context, Identity, and Intersectionality, 2017 (i.e., Multicultural Guidelines) are conceptualized from a need to reconsider diversity and multicultural practice within professional psychology at a different period in time, with intersectionality as its primary purview. The 2017 version of the Multicultural Guidelines encourages psychologists to consider how knowledge and understanding of identity develops from and is disseminated within professional psychological practice. Endemic to this understanding is an approach that incorporates developmental and contextual antecedents of identity and how they can be acknowledged, addressed, and embraced to engender more effective models of professional engagement. The Multicultural Guidelines incorporate broad reference group identities (e.g., Black/African American/Black American, White/White American, and Asian/Asian American/Pacific Islander) to acknowledge within group differences and the role of self-definition in identity.