Special Section: Training Practicing Anthropologists

No more than 60 American Indians and Alaska Natives currently hold doctoral degrees in the fields of anthropology, psychiatry, psychology, social work, and sociology. Only a few of these persons actually work in positions where they can directly impact American Indian and Alaska Native mental health programs. Moreover, lacking graduate level trained Indian professionals, many of these programs—as within the Indian Health Service, for example—have become almost solely dependent upon an Indian paraprofessional workforce. Communities and service agencies alike, however, prefer more trained Indian and Native psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, medical sociologists, and medical anthropologists.