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Abstract
In this study, we examined how engagement and disengagement strategies for coping with discrimination might explain how
gendered racism influences psychological distress among 212 African American women enrolled in an institution of higher
education. Engagement strategies were coping with discrimination using resistance and education/advocacy. Disengagement
coping strategies were detachment from the stressor, internalization/self-blame, and use of drugs and alcohol. In addition, we
examined the potential moderating or buffering role of gendered racial identity centrality (i.e., how important being an African
American woman is to ones self-concept) in the links between gendered racism and psychological distress, and between
gendered racism and strategies for coping with discrimination. Results from our online survey revealed that both coping with
discrimination via detachment and internalization/self-blame uniquely mediated the gendered racismpsychological distress
links. In addition, findings from the moderation analyses indicated that the direct effect of gendered racism and detachment
coping and the conditional indirect effect of gendered racism on psychological distress were contingent on gendered racial
identity centrality; these relations were only significant among African American women with moderate to high levels of
identity centrality, suggesting that identity centrality does not play a buffering role. Our findings suggest the importance of
applying an intersectionality framework to explore the experiences of gendered racism and gendered racial identity centrality
in African American womens lives. Our results also lead us to recommend future work that helps African American women
reduce the use of disengagement strategies to cope with discrimination. Online slides for instructors who want to use this article for
teaching are available to PWQ subscribers on PWQs website at http://pwq.sagepub.com/supplemental
Keywords
racism, discrimination, coping, identity centrality, psychological distress
Previous research indicates that perceived discrimination has
a cumulative negative effect on people of color (Pieterse,
Todd, Neville, & Carter, 2012; Utsey & Ponterotto, 1999)
and women across racial and ethnic backgrounds (Klonoff
& Landrine, 1995; Pascoe & Smart Richman, 2009). Using
the biopsychosocial model of racism (Clark, Anderson,
Clark, & Williams, 1999), many researchers have conceptualized racism and other forms of oppression as stressors that
can negatively impact the mental and physical health of people of color, particularly African Americans (Landrine &
Klonoff, 1996; Pascoe & Smart Richman, 2009; Pieterse
et al., 2012). African American women experience unique
stressors related to intersecting forms of racial and gender
discrimination (Shorter-Gooden, 2004; Woods-Giscombe &
Lobel, 2008). These stressors contribute to the higher rates
of stress-related health issues and health disparities for African American women compared to their White counterparts
(Woods-Giscombe & Lobel, 2008).
Researchers have highlighted the important role of coping
strategies in understanding the negative effects of racism and
other forms of oppression (Clark et al., 1999; Harrell, 2000).
Corresponding Author:
Dawn M. Szymanski, Department of Psychology, University of Tennessee,
Knoxville, TN 37996, USA.
Email: dawnszymanski@msn.com
230
Szymanski, Taha, West, & Kaslow, 2014), more posttraumatic stress symptoms (Woods, Buchanan, & Settles,
2009), and lower social self-esteem (King, 2003).
Gendered Racism
231
associated with an increased use of problem solving, avoidant, and support-seeking coping styles among African
Americans. Racial discrimination stress predicted the use
of Africultural, culturally specific coping (i.e., emotional
debriefing, communalistic coping, and spiritually centered
coping), after controlling for general coping styles, among
low-income African American adolescents (Gaylord-Harden
& Cunningham, 2009). In terms of mediation, a study targeting African American adolescents found that avoidant coping
strategies explained the relation between racial discrimination and depressive symptoms (Seaton, Upton, Gilbert, &
Volpe, 2014). Likewise, Szymanski and Obiri (2011) found
that experiences of racial discrimination were related to an
increased use of both positive and negative religious coping styles among an African American sample, but only
negative religious coping styles mediated the racism and
psychological distress link. Thomas et al. (2008) found
that culturally specific emotional debriefing (e.g., thinking
about other things and not thinking about the stressor) partially mediated the relation between gendered racism and
psychological distress among African American women.
However, they found no mediational effects for communalistic, ritualistic, or spiritually centered Africultural coping
styles.
With a few exceptions (e.g., Lewis et al., 2013; Thomas
et al., 2008), most of the literature on coping among African
American women has focused on racism and sexism separately; thus, our study advances the coping literature by paying attention to coping strategies used in response to the
unique, intersectional experiences of gendered racism.
Furthermore, most of the literature on coping with discrimination among African Americans has focused on general coping responses used for any potential stressful event, or
culturally specific coping styles. However, three studies
found that African American adults cope differently depending on whether the stressor is a general life stressor versus a
racial stressor (Brown, Phillips, Abdullah, Vinson, & Robertson, 2011; Hoggard, Byrd, & Sellers, 2012). Yet, very little
research has examined coping strategies unique to discriminatory experiences (Miller & Kaiser, 2001). A notable exception is Wei, Alvarez, Ku, Russell, and Bonetts (2010) study
that found that racial and ethnic minority persons frequently
use five strategies for coping with discrimination: detachment, internalization, drugs and alcohol, resistance, and education/advocacy. Wei et al. (2010) also found that coping
strategies, specific to discrimination, uniquely predicted
depressive symptoms, self-esteem, and life satisfaction, after
controlling for general coping styles. These findings underscore the need to examine discrimination-specific coping
strategies. Thus, we examined how disengagement coping
strategies (i.e., detachment, internalization, drugs and alcohol) and engagement coping strategies (i.e., resistance and
education/advocacy), employed to deal with discrimination,
might partially mediate the link between gendered racism and
psychological distress.
Coping with gendered racism via detachment is the process of disengaging from problem solving and distancing
oneself from social support (Wei et al., 2010). Lewis et al.
(2013) found that African American women reported using
detachment coping strategies to deal with subtle forms of
gendered racism, especially when the situation was outside
their control. Detachment may provide a means of social and
cognitive avoidance of these often unpredictable stressors
(Miller & Kaiser, 2001; Seaton et al., 2014). In addition,
detachment may protect African American women from further assaults, rejection, and misunderstanding from others
about the race-related stressor (Miller & Kaiser, 2001). However, detachment may fuel psychological distress due to
decreases in emotional support from others, and feeling at a
loss for how to solve the problem.
Coping with gendered racism via internalization or selfblame is the process by which a person attributes the cause
for the discriminatory events to herself (Wei et al., 2010).
Because many gendered racist experiences can be ambiguous, it may leave an African American woman wondering
if the action was due to prejudice or other factors; thereby
increasing the likelihood that she blames herself for the event
(Miller & Kaiser, 2001). It may be that White persons discredit the prejudiced experience, leaving an African American
woman to internalize the experience, rather than attribute it
to the perpetrator (Kaiser & Miller, 2001). Carr et al.
(2014) found that greater experiences of racial discrimination
and sexual objectification were related to greater coping with
discrimination via internalization, which in turn was related
to more depressive symptoms among a low-income clinical
sample of African American women. An African American
woman may also cope with gendered racism by using drugs
and/or alcohol to self-medicate, numb emotions, and decrease
feelings of anger and distress (at least in the short-term)
related to the discriminatory experience (Szymanski, Moffitt,
& Carr, 2011). In a longitudinal study, Gibbons et al. (2010)
found that racial discrimination among African American
parents and adolescents was linked to increased substance
use, and this link was mediated by feelings of anger and
hostility.
Resistance is the process of confronting the perpetrators of
a discriminatory behavior, while coping via education/advocacy is the process of increasing self and others awareness of
discrimination and implementing advocacy efforts to fight
discrimination at micro- and macro-levels (Wei et al.,
2010). The college context is unique in that it often provides
diversity-related educational programming (courses and campus events), student groups aimed at increasing awareness of
sociocultural identities and experiences of oppression, and
opportunities for community engagement and social action.
Qualitative studies of community school and college students
have found that African American women often use resistance and education/advocacy strategies as a way to proactively cope with gendered racism and avert its potentially
negative effects (Everett, Hall, & Hamilton-Mason, 2010;
232
encompasses a more serious understanding and commitment to African American womens experiences and issues,
which may lead to blaming the perpetrators of gendered
racism, thereby lessening the potential negative influences
of discrimination on mental health (Cross & Vandiver,
2001). Furthermore, African American women with high
levels of identity centrality might be less likely to internalize the negative messages about being an African American woman that are often conveyed through acts of
gendered racism; thereby protecting them from its negative
effects (Neblett et al., 2012). When faced with gendered
racism, African American women with high levels of identity centrality may be able to feel good about themselves by
focusing on the collective strength and positive aspects of
their group; thereby buffering themselves from negative
mental health consequences (Sellers & Shelton, 2003).
Meta-analytic studies of in-group identification reveal
mixed results, with some finding a buffering effect, others
finding no effect, and a smaller number finding an exacerbating effect on the link between discrimination and psychosocial outcomes (Pascoe & Smart Richman, 2009). For
example, Sellers et al. (2003) found that racial centrality buffered the negative impact of racial discrimination on the psychological distress of African American young adults.
Similarly, Seaton (2009) found that high racial identity centrality, high public regard (i.e., beliefs that others think positively about African Americans), and high private regard
(i.e., positive feelings about African Americans and about
being an African American) buffered the negative effect of
racial discrimination on depressive symptoms among a sample of African American adolescents. Feminist identification
also has been shown to protect women against negative
effects of sexism on various mental health outcomes, including psychological distress and disordered eating (for a
review, see Szymanski & Moffitt, 2012). Finally, DeBlaere
and Bertsch (2013) found that womanist identification, which
is inclusive of racial/ethnic, gender, and sexual orientation
identities, played a buffering role in the link between sexism
and psychological distress among African American sexual
minority women.
Contrary to the buffering effect hypothesis, Burrow and
Ong (2010) found that racial identity centrality exacerbated
the negative effects of racial discrimination on depression
and negative affect among African American doctoral
students and graduates of doctoral programs. McCoy and
Major (2003) found that lower gender centrality buffered the
sexist discrimination and psychological distress links among
women. Finally, Pascoe and Smart Richman (2009) in a
meta-analysis reported that the majority of studies found no
effect for in-group identification; however, these findings are
likely to be influenced by the notorious difficulty of detecting
interaction effects in nonexperimental studies, due to low
sample sizes and a lack of power needed to detect the small
effect sizes typically found in social science research
(McClelland & Judd, 1993).
233
Moderator
Multiple Coping
Mediators
Identity Centrality
Detachment
Internalization
Drug & Alcohol Use
Resistance
Education &
Advocacy
Mental Health
Outcome
Predictor
Gendered Racism
Psychological Distress
Figure 1. Hypothesized model predicting mental health outcome. Dashed line indicates conditional indirect effect.
The research on identity centrality is limited in understanding individuals with multiple minority identities, by its
focus on only one discrimination dimension, and a single
identity factor. The conflicting findings related to in-group
identification may be due, in part, to the use of measures that
do not adequately assess the discrimination experiences and
cultural identities of its participants (e.g., African American
women). For example, in a qualitative study of young adult
African American women, gendered racial identity had
greater salience in participants lives than did the separate
constructs of gender or racial identity (Thomas, Hacker, &
Hoxha, 2011). There is no previous research that focuses
on the intersections of race and gender in African American
womens identity centrality, as well their potential interactive
role with gendered racism, in the links to mental health outcomes. In addition, research has rarely focused on African
American female samples. This study advances existing literature by focusing on the intersectional nature of both discrimination experiences and definitions of self-concept that are
important to African American women. Given that racebased, gender-based, and social psychological theories on
in-group identification articulate a protective function of
identity centrality and that more studies in Pascoe and Smart
Richmans (2009) review found support for a buffering,
rather than exacerbating, role in the discrimination and mental health links, we hypothesized that gendered racial identity
centrality would play a protective role in the link between
gendered racism and African American womens psychological distress.
experiences of gendered racism (Brondolo et al., 2009; Sellers et al., 2003; Sellers & Shelton, 2003). For example, African American women with high levels of identity centrality
may have a stronger sense that they can respond effectively
to discrimination and have more adaptive, effective, and varied coping responses when faced with high levels of gendered
racism, because they have more experience dealing with it
(Sellers et al., 2003). African American women with high
identity centrality may also be more likely to think about race
and gender discrimination and thereby may engage in coping
efforts aimed at actively dealing with the source of stress (i.e.,
gendered racism); they may be less likely to disengage from
the stressor when faced with gendered racism. Thus, identity
centrality should moderate the direct relations between gendered racism and both disengagement and engagement coping strategies. In addition, a pattern of moderated mediation
(Hayes, 2013) is likely to be present. That is, identity centrality might also qualify the indirect relation between gendered
racism and psychological distress. However, there is a lack of
research targeting both in-group identification and coping
strategies; the theoretical assertions have not yet been empirically tested.
234
Method
Participants
The initial sample comprised 250 participants who completed
an online survey. Eleven men, 1 Asian American, 13 nonstudents, 7 participants who left at least one measure completely blank, and 6 participants who failed two or more of
the 3 validity check items (e.g., For this item, click the button labeled red), were eliminated from the data set. The final
sample was 212 women and 98% self-identified as African
American/Black and 2% as biracial. Participants ranged in
age from 18 to 47 years (M 19.50, SD 3.87). All participants were currently enrolled as students in a higher education institution, with 61% being first-year undergraduates,
20% sophomores, 10% juniors, 5% seniors, 3% graduate students, and 1% other. Participants self-identified as being a
member of the following social class categories: 1% wealthy,
14% upper middle class, 47% middle class, 31% working
Procedure
Participants were recruited through a department of psychologys human research pool at a large Southeastern predominantly White public university and through an e-mail
announcement of the study that was sent to the listserv
owner/contact person of a variety of university/college multicultural or African American/Black student centers, African
American student/faculty groups, and African American
Studies programs. The e-mail asked recipients to forward our
recruitment e-mail to their list serves. The e-mail announcement was sent to individuals on the website listed as either
contact person or listserv owner.
Participants completed an online web-based survey
located on a secure firewall protected server accessed via a
hypertext link. After participants read the informed consent,
they indicated consent to take the survey by clicking a button,
which directed them to the next page containing the survey.
The survey included a demographic questionnaire and the
aforementioned measures, which were randomly ordered.
As an incentive, participants were told they were eligible to
enter a participant raffle awarding gift certificates to an
online merchant. In addition, eligible participants could
receive course credit for their undergraduate course. We used
a separate raffle/course credit database so that there was no
way to connect a persons online course credit submission
with her submitted survey.
Measures
Gendered racism. We used Buchanans (2005) Racialized
Sexual Harassment Scale to assess gendered racism. This
scale consists of 7 items assessing experiences of oppressive
behaviors that focus simultaneously on ones race and gender. Participants were asked to indicate how often during the
past year they experienced a variety of these events. Example
items include, Said things to insult people of your gender
and ethnicity (e.g., Black women are rude, Asian men
are wimpy, Latino men are violent, White women are
dumb, etc.) and Made comments about your body that
emphasized your gender and ethnicity (e.g., for Black
women, comments about ones Black ass, for White
women, skinny white bitch, etc.). Each item is rated on a
5-point Likert-type scale from 0 (never) to 4 (very often).
Mean scores were used, with higher scores indicating greater
experiences of gendered racism. Internal reliability (.86) as
well as content, structural (via exploratory factor analyses),
and construct validity were demonstrated by Buchanan
(2005) and Woods, Buchanan, and Settles (2009). The Cronbachs a for the current sample was .89.
Coping with discrimination. We used Wei et al.s (2010)
Coping with Discrimination Scale (CDS) to assess
235
psychological distress. Internal reliability (.89 for adult therapy clients and .90 for undergraduates) and structural (via
exploratory factor analyses) and construct validity were
demonstrated (Deane, Leathem, & Spicer, 1992; Green
et al., 1988). The Cronbachs a for the current sample was .90.
Results
Preliminary Analyses and Descriptive Data
Analysis of missing data patterns for the 212 participants in
our final sample indicated that .43%, or less than a half of
a percentage of all items for all participants/cases were missing, and 41% of the items were not missing data for any
participant/case. Considering individual cases, 82% of participants had no missing data. Finally, no item had 2% or more
of missing values. Given the very small amount of missing
data, we used available case analyses procedures, wherein
mean scale scores are calculated without substitution or
imputation of values, which produces similar results to multiple imputation methods (Parent, 2013).
Data met guidelines for univariate normality (i.e., skewness < 3, kurtosis < 10; Weston & Gore, 2006). Preliminary
correlational analyses between the demographic variables
of age, self-reported socioeconomic status, and geographic
region (South vs. Other) and the variables in our study
revealed a few significant (p < .05) associations. More specifically, older age was related to greater identity centrality (r
.18) and more coping with discrimination via education/
advocacy (r .17). Higher self-reported socioeconomic status was related to less coping with discrimination via detachment (r .16) and lower psychological distress levels (r
.20). However, we did not include these variables as covariates in the subsequent analyses reported below because the
utility of controlling for demographic variables in multiple
regression analyses has been questioned by scholars. Because
variables such as self-reported socioeconomic status are ordinal variables, they are often not normally distributed and can
behave poorly as covariates. In addition, from a theoretical
standpoint, problems occur when a demographic variable
shares meaningful variance with another variable of theoretical interest (Little, An, Johanns, & Giordani, 2000; Miller &
Chapman, 2001; Thompson, 1992). Furthermore, analyses
including them as covariates did not change the findings in
any meaningful way (i.e., significance levels and the directions of the relations/beta weights were similar for analyses
using covariates vs. not using them).
Descriptive statistics and bivariate correlations among
all study variables are shown in Table 1. At the bivariate
level, gendered racism was significantly and positively
related to coping with discrimination via detachment,
internalization, resistance, and education/advocacy but not
with coping with discrimination via drugs and alcohol.
Gendered racism was not related to identity centrality.
Gendered racism and disengagement coping (detachment
236
Table 1. Means, Standard Deviations, and Correlations for All Study Variables.
Variable
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Gendered racism
Coping via detachment
Coping via internalization
Coping via drugs and alcohol
Coping via resistance
Coping via education/advocacy
Identity centrality
Psychological distress
Possible range
SD
04
16
16
16
16
16
17
14
1.92
2.36
2.55
1.65
2.53
3.24
5.89
1.82
1.06
0.86
1.14
0.93
0.99
1.33
1.21
0.52
.17*
.17*
.02
.22*
.32*
.13
.31*
.29*
.09
.02
.04
.01
.40*
.07
.09
.12
.11
.29*
.39*
.10
.08
.03
.25*
.11
.08
.34*
.12
.11
*p < .05.
Mediation Analyses
We used the PROCESS macro (Hayes, 2013; Model 4)
to test the mediation model described in Hypothesis 1. Current recommendations for testing indirect effects, which do
not require both the component paths of the indirect effect
to be statistically significant, were followed (Mallinckrodt,
Abraham, Wei, & Russell, 2006). We used bootstrapping
analyses with 1,000 bootstrapping resamples to produce
95% confidence intervals for the indirect effect, because it
does not assume normality in the distribution of the mediated
effect and can be applied with confidence to smaller samples
(cf. Mallinckrodt et al., 2006; Preacher & Hayes, 2008). If the
confidence interval does not contain zero, one can conclude
that mediation is significant and meaningful (Preacher &
Hayes, 2008).
The results of our mediation model are shown in Figure 2.
The test of mediation using bootstrapping analyses revealed
that both coping via detachment (mean indirect [unstandardized] effect .03; SE .01, 95% CI [.005, .050], b
.05) and internalization (mean indirect [unstandardized]
effect .01; SE .01, 95% CI [.001, .033], b .02)
mediated the gendered racismpsychological distress links.
Contrary to our hypothesis, no mediated effects were found
for coping using drugs and alcohol (mean indirect [unstandardized] effect .00; SE .00, 95% CI [.006, .0.005], b
.00), resistance (mean indirect [unstandardized] effect
.00; SE .01, 95% CI [.016, .020], b .00), and education/advocacy (mean indirect [unstandardized] effect .00;
SE .01, 95% CI [.019, .022], b .00). Finally, the variables in the model accounted for 25% of the variance in psychological distress scores.
Discussion
Our study extends previous research by using an intersectional framework to examine the potential mediating roles
237
Coping Via
Detachment
.32*
.17*
Coping Via
Internalization
.17*
-.02
.16*
-.01
Gendered Racism
Psychological Distress
.23*
.22*
Coping Via
Resistance
.01
.32*
Coping Via
Education/Advocacy
.01
Figure 2. Path model of direct and indirect relations of variables of interest predicting psychological distress. Values reflect standardized
coefficients. *p < .05.
238
Table 2. Test of Identity Centrality as a Moderator of the PredictorMediator and PredictorCriterion Links.
Predictor Variable
Criterion Variable
R2
df
2.09*
0.02
2.33*
.05
3.91*
3, 208
.18
.08
.10
2.58*
1.18
1.46
.05
3.46*
3, 208
.01
.06
.02
.11
.07
.03
0.23
1.06
0.39
.01
.49
3, 208
.20
.07
.01
.22
.09
.01
3.13*
1.27
.16
.06
4.26*
3, 208
.34
.35
.11
.27
.32
.09
4.21*
5.03*
1.42
.20
17.65*
3, 208
.11
.19
.07
.00
.00
.00
.03
.02
.23
.32
.15
.01
.00
.08
.06
.04
3.47*
4.92*
2.24*
.07
.02
.12
.93
.57
.25
8.46
8, 203
.12
.00
.13
.14
.00
.16
.19
.08
.11
Criterion: detachment
Gendered racism
Identity centrality
Gendered Racism Identity Centrality
Criterion: internalization
Gendered racism
Identity centrality
Gendered Racism Identity Centrality
Criterion: drugs and alcohol
Gendered racism
Identity centrality
Gendered Racism Identity Centrality
Criterion: resistance
Gendered racism
Identity centrality
Gendered Racism Identity Centrality
Criterion: education/advocacy
Gendered racism
Identity centrality
Gendered Racism Identity Centrality
Criterion: psychological distress
Gendered racism
Detachment
Internalization
Drugs and alcohol
Resistance
Education/advocacy
Identity centrality
Gendered Racism Identity Centrality
Note. b and t reflects values from the final regression equation. df degrees of freedom.
*p < .05.
among African Americans. It may be that engagement coping strategies related to resistance and education/advocacy
produce both benefits (e.g., reducing gendered racism,
changing a perpetrators behavior and beliefs) and costs
(e.g., increasing interpersonal conflict, being confronted
with a lack of institutional support for formal complaints,
futility associated with trying to modify experiences that are
often uncontrollable and chronic; Hyers, 2007; Noh, Beiser,
Kasper, Hou, & Rummens, 1999). Consequences may cancel each other out to produce very little influence on psychological distress. Conceptually, it also makes sense that
disengagement coping strategies might be a stronger mediator in the gendered racismdistress links, because the focus
is on measuring negative mental health rather than positive
psychosocial outcomes. More avoidant or maladaptive coping might be more predictive of psychological distress. It
may be that engagement coping strategies might be important in explaining the relations between gendered racism and
feelings of self-fulfillment, empowerment, self-efficacy,
personal mastery and control, meaning making, social support, community engagement, academic success, and life
satisfaction.
239
Partially supporting our hypotheses, results of the moderation analyses indicated that the direct effect of gendered
racism and detachment coping, and the conditional indirect
effect of gendered racism on psychological distress, were
contingent on gendered racial identity centrality. These relations were only significant among African American women
with moderate to high levels of gendered racial identity centrality; thus, high identity centrality does not appear to serve
as a buffer in the gendered racismdistress links. It may be
that individuals who place a high degree of significance on
their identity as African American women may detach from
others and from the stressor when they experience frequent
gendered racism to manage feelings of distress, anger,
exhaustion, and conflict with others associated with the event
(Brondolo et al., 2009). This finding is supported by previous
research (e.g., Thomas et al., 2008) that has also highlighted
the influence of gendered racial socialization for African
American women in their utilization of detachment, minimization, and avoidant coping strategies. Specifically, African
American women are often socialized to be strong, resilient,
and self-sufficient in the face of adversity due to the stereotypes of the strong Black woman (Lewis & Neville, 2015;
Thomas et al., 2008; Woods-Giscombe, 2010; Woods-Giscombe & Black, 2010). African American women who have
higher levels of gendered racial identity centrality might also
be more likely to internalize this strong Black woman/superwoman schema, which in turn may lead African American
women to assume that they have to deal with stressors on
their own, and they may become desensitized to gendered
240
Practice Implications
Our study has implications for college clinical and counseling
psychologists as well as other mental health providers. It is
important for practitioners to increase their awareness about
the unique types of gendered racism that African American
women experience and how it can manifest both inside the
college context (e.g., in the learning environment; in relations
with university faculty, administrators, staff, and other students) and outside in the community. In terms of specific
interventions, practitioners might lessen the potential impact
that gendered racism has on African American womens psychological distress, by using therapeutic strategies designed
to provide validation, support, and empathy for their experiences. Clinicians might increase clients awareness of their
241
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
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