Australian mental health practitioners’ racial and ethnic blindness

Colour-blind racial and ethnic attitudes, often viewed as promoting equality, can negatively affect non-White individuals by ignoring colonial history, institutional racism, and discrimination. This study investigated how colour-blind attitudes are correlated with factors including demographic and cultural competence-related characteristics among 300 Australian mental health practitioners. Participants, aged 18 or older, were recruited through social media and professional associations, and completed an online survey with demographic questions and validated scales, including the Colour-Blind Racial Attitudes Scale (CoBRAS) and the Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding (BIDR). Spearman’s rank-order correlations and multiple linear regression analyses were used to explore relationships between practitioners' colour-blind attitudes and demographic and cultural competence-related variables. The results showed that gender (β = 11.98, p ' 0.001), occupation (β = 2.09, p ' 0.001), years of work experience (β = 4.93, p ' 0.001), and attendance of cultural competence training (β = 2.87, p ' 0.01) were significantly associated with colour-blind attitudes. No significant relationship was found between BIDR scores and CoBRAS total scores (β = 0.03, p = 0.848). The study reveals that mental health practitioners in Australia adopt colour-blind racial and ethnic attitudes, indicating a need for enhanced cultural competence training to improve care for non-White clients and foster more inclusive mental health practices.