Optimizing mentoring relationships with persons from historically marginalized communities through the use of difficult dialogues

ABSTRACT

Neuropsychology has struggled to recruit and retain trainees and early career professionals from historically marginalized communities (HMC). One of the primary strategies for retaining these individuals, and ensuring their success, is quality mentorship. Effective mentorship for trainees from HMC requires responsive attention to the unique training experiences that emerge from societal forces, such as structural racism and classism. Although not often discussed with mentors, trainees from these groups experience discrimination at substantial rates, which contributes to dissatisfaction, stress, and ultimately elevated attrition. One strategy to reduce attrition involves developing relational mentorship dynamics to encourage explicit conversations about instances of discrimination during training. However, a barrier to nurturing these types of dynamics is the difference in power and privilege across multiple axes in the dyad. Infusing techniques from the Difficult Dialogues framework offers mentors of HMC trainees a tangible route to reducing the impact of differential power, enhancing relational dynamics, and increasing the likelihood of retention in neuropsychology. The objectives of this manuscript are to elucidate the necessity of understanding one’s power and privilege in the mentorship dyad by understanding barriers experienced by persons from HMC. This manuscript also outlines specific strategies through the lens of the Difficult Dialogues framework to ameliorate the negative impact of unaddressed differentials of power and privilege in the mentoring of training experiences in clinical neuropsychology. Finally, through the use of anonymized case examples, the manuscript offers effective strategies for responsive, professional development of trainees from HMC to facilitate supportive neuropsychological training experiences.

KEYWORDS:

• Mentoring
• historically marginalized communities
• difficult dialogues

Acknowledgments

This work was supported in part by the Office of Mental Health and Suicide Prevention (OMHSP) of the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Veterans Affairs Sierra Pacific Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center (MIRECC).

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.