BTM140 - Dr. Edil Torres Rivera – From the Army to the President of the American Counseling Association
About Today’s Guest
Dr. Edil Torres Rivera has a Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology with a concentration in multicultural counseling from the University of Connecticut, Storrs. He is a professor of counseling and the director of the Latinx Cluster initiative at Wichita State University, Wichita, Kansas. Edil Torres Rivera is native Puerto Rican with a career of over 25 years in counseling. This includes 12 years in the United States Army. He currently serving as the President of the American Counseling Association (2023-2024).
Dr. Torres Rivera research interests are in multicultural counseling, group work, chaos theory, liberation psychology (decolonial approaches), indigenous counseling, Puerto Rican studies, identity development, and gang/prison-related behavior. Specifically, his primary research focuses on complexity and how indigenous healing techniques are a necessary ingredient when working with ethnic minority populations in the United States. Dr. Torres Rivera has additional interests in studying the implications of social injustice and oppression in counseling and psychotherapy with ethnic minorities in the United States.
His community work includes consultation services to the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe Council in Nevada, visiting professor to the Universidad del Valle, Guatemala, and he was the director of the Graduate School of Education’s School Counseling Program in Singapore.
PsychArmor Resource of the Week
This week’s PsychArmor resource of the week is the PsychArmor a course from the Brain Health and Wellness Learning Series, Bolstering Resilience. This course, sponsored by the Wounded Warrior Project, highlights five factors of wellness: goal setting, mental health, nutrition, sleep, and exercise. You’ll learn why these supporting pillars are so important to overall well-being, their application in daily life, and how it’s never too late to make a lasting change. You can see find the course here: https://learn.psycharmor.org/courses/WWP-BHW-bolstering-resilience.
Links Mentioned In This Episode
Theme Music
Our theme music Don’t Kill the Messenger was written and performed by Navy Veteran Jerry Maniscalco, in cooperation with Operation Encore, a non profit committed to supporting singer/songwriter and musicians across the military and Veteran communities.
This Episode Sponsored By:
This episode is sponsored by PsychArmor, the premier education and learning ecosystem specializing in military culture content. PsychArmor offers an online e-learning laboratory with custom training options for organizations.
Producer and Host Duane France is a retired Army Noncommissioned Officer, combat veteran, and clinical mental health counselor for service members, veterans, and their families. You can find more about the work that he is doing at www.veteranmentalhealth.com
