ABSTRACT
Cultural competency of service providers and mental health agencies and systems of care was invoked to remedy underutilization and dissatisfaction by these populations with available mental health resources. Although counseling psychology emphasized multicultural competency in counseling/psychotherapy, relatively little attention has been devoted to multicultural assessment training as an essential professional contribution to assessment perse, and particularly to an assessment-intervention service delivery system. Debate between counseling and clinical psychology concerns the self-report nature of cultural competency measurement, employment of qualitative methodologies, and an opinion forum provided by counseling psychology journals. Clinical psychologists have a more parsimonious construction of scientific reality as a consequence of self-identification as behavioral scientists, greater acceptance of medical model attitudes that depersonalize, objectify, and strip patients of their cultural identities. TEMAS clinicians employ explicit, credible, appropriate service delivery social etiquette for test administration because of a shared common cultural milieu and languages with clients.
