Maria Root

Maria Root

Biography

Maria Primitiva Paz Root was born on September 13, 1955 in Manila, Philippines. Root was born into a poor family with three children; she was the eldest child with two younger brothers. Roots family migrated to the United States when she was of a younger age, and struggled to get into the country due to the Asiatic Barred Zone act. Due to this act Maria and her mother, who was of Pilipino decent, (her father of Caucasian decent) went through Belize, then Guatemala to enter the United States and eventually moved to Los Angeles California where she grew up.

Root attended a catholic school growing up in Los Angeles where she was first introduced to psychology. The catholic school that she attended wanted to send her to a public school and a psychologist because they believed she had issues with “internalizing guilt.” Maria Roots mother who felt strongly about education was also interested in psychology and went to school to study psychology herself. Maria says that she remembers being her mother’s participant when she did experiments on relaxation methods and biofeedback. Root’s mother also tested animals in her research which Root believes is one of the reasons why she became interested in psychobiology.

Root attended the University of California at Riverside and graduated in with a double major in Psychology and Sociology in 1977. She then went on to get a masters degree in Cognitive Psychology in 1979 at Claremont University then subsequently obtained her PhD in Clinical Psychology at the University of Washington in 1983 with an emphasis on minority mental health. Root currently resides in Seattle, Washington where she has her own private practice, is an independent scholar, and is involved in researching trauma, multicultural identities, eating disorders, multicultural psychology, and feminist therapy. She has been in private practice for over 20 years and focuses mainly on adult and adolescent treatment therapy, which includes working with families and couples.

Work/Professional Accomplishments

Maria Root has published many works in her career but she is mostly credited with publishing the first contemporary work on mix-race people called Racially Mixed People in America (1992). Along with this book Root also edited two award winning books on multiracial people and produced the Foundational Bill of Rights for Racially Mixed People.

 The U.S. Census referred to Root’s texts on multiracial people in their deliberations to change the format of the race question for the 2000 census allowing multiracial individuals to check more than one box for questions about their race. Maria Root’s many other publications cover other areas such as trauma, cultural assessment, multiracial identity, feminist therapy, and eating disorders. Root was the former president of the Washington State Psychological Association, the former chair of American Psychological Association’s board for the Advancement of Psychology in Public Interest, former member of the APA's board of the Society for the Psychological Study of Ethnic Minority Issues and she is currently an active member of the Asian American Psychology Association.

Relevance to Psychology of Women

Dr. Root’s working areas are relevant to some of the topics we have covered in class so far. Her work emphasizes mainly on culturally competent practice, life transition issues, trauma, ethnic and racial identity, workplace stress and harassment, and disordered eating. In the early 1980s, Dr. Root established a group treatment program for patients with bulimia that grew out of her dissertation work. To continue this program, she trained other professionals to recognize and treat people with a range of disordered eating symptoms and she herself continues to treat people with eating disorders today.

 

References:

http://www.drmariaroot.com/about.php 

http://www.feministvoices.com/maria-p-p-root/

http://www.drmariaroot.com/doc/BillOfRights.pdf


By: Ashley Lopez