Preparing Culturally Efficacious Bilingual Counselors Through Theory and Case Studies

Our passion and pride to serve our community instilled a desire to provide adequate preparation of biculturalbilingual counselors. Five Spanish-speaking Latina scholars, with professional experience as bilingual counselors, recognized the multitude of challenges encountered when providing services in Spanish without any formal training. As you read this text, know that this book was created by bilingual counselors, and for bilingual counselors, to raise our collective voice. Throughout our first conversations we realized a significant problem in the field: the overall assumption that in order for bilingual counselors to be culturally and linguistically efficacious, they simply have to speak the language or identify as part of the Latine community. Our ground-breaking book attends to the need of providing adequate knowledge and resources to prepare culturally efficacious bilingual counselors. Given that our focus is to ensure access to materials in Spanish that address Latine mental health issues, another unique feature of our book is that it provides a variety of translations, resources, and case studies in both English and Spanish. Special emphasis was also given to bilingual supervision needs and included in a chapter with resources and appropriate translations. We hope that this critical work provides the profession a resource in which theory and practice intersect for our work with the Latine community.

Claudia Interiano-Shiverdecker, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Counseling at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA). She specializes in providing bilingual counseling services to the Latine community and co-leads the Bilingual Counseling Certificate at UTSA.

Belinda Bustos Flores, PhD, is an Associate Dean and a Professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Flores’ publications center on culturally efficacious teacher preparation. In 2019, Flores was the recipient of the AERA Bilingual Education Research SIG Lifetime Achievement Award.

Cristina Thornell (née Martínez-Smith), PhD, received her doctorate degree in Counselor Education and Supervision from the University of Texas at San Antonio. She is a Licensed Professional Counselor in Texas and a former Assistant Professor at St. Edward’s University. She translated the best-selling self-help book Unfuck Your Brain.

Jessenia García Ph.D is an assistant professor of counseling at St. Edward’s University and a licensed professional counselor with a focus on Latinx issues in mental health. She has worked across settings in eating disorder treatment centers, college counseling, transitional living, and private practice.

Isanely Guerrero Kurz, PhD is a licensed professional counselor with experience providing counseling services related to neurodiversity, perinatal mental health, and trauma-informed care. She provides therapy to Latine communities in English and Spanish, and has a focused on multicultural issues within counselor education.