Time & Location
Jun 21, 2024, 9:00 AM – 10:15 AM PDT
Virtual Event
About the event
The Asian Indian Hindu community is one of the fastest-growing immigrant populations in the United States. Mental health professionals may find it challenging to provide care to clients who are ethnically, racially, and culturally different from them. Gaining knowledge of Hindu values and cultural and spiritual beliefs can assist them in providing culturally competent care. This workshop is the first of a three-part series designed to offer clinicians an opportunity to enhance cultural competence when working with Asian Indian Hindu clients. The first part focuses on understanding Hinduism.
Learning Objectives:
At the end of the workshop, the participants will:
• Gain information about the origin of Hinduism.
• Be educated about key beliefs of Hinduism.
• Acquire information about the supreme being and be able to identify the main deities that are worshipped in Hinduism.
• Learn about the goals of human life.
• Learn the Theory of karma.
About The Speaker:
Amisha Desai is an Asian Indian Marriage and Family Therapist. She is the founder of Self Empowering Journeys- a private practice in Montville, NJ, and an educator for over ten years. Amisha is currently pursuing her doctoral degree in Culture, Diversity, and Social Justice in a Global Context. She has served as the Education Chair for the New Jersey Association of Marriage and Family Therapy and worked as an Adjunct Professor at Bergen Community College. Besides being a therapist and an educator, Amisha lives in New Jersey with her husband, mother-in-law, and two children.
She was born and raised in a Hindu family in India and immigrated to the United States in her mid-twenties. While pursuing education in the USA and later practicing as a family therapist, she found few counselors from her background, although there were numerous Asian Indian doctors and psychiatrists. Thus, she is passionate about the appropriate representation of the Asian Indian culture, educating therapeutic communities about unconscious bias, and maintaining a diversity and inclusion-focused practice. As a speaker, she uses an intersectional perspective to weave her clinical and personal experiences related to immigration and acculturation to bring expert discourse into the workshops.