2. Adolescent Issues
identify the important things that a psychotherapist
from one culture ought to know if he or she is to be
reasonably
successful in treating an adolescent from another
culture
3. Vargas and Koss-Chioino’s(1992) cogent observation that describing
effective cross-cultural psychotherapeutic work with adolescents as
“culture-sensitive,” “culture-relevant,”
or “culture-informed”—terms that are widely used and favored in
academic circles—does not really capture the desired process involved.
These phrases convey, perhaps unintentionally, a kind of detached
passivity, as if to be“aware,” to be “knowledgeable,” or to be “pertinent”
is enough to guarantee some degree of success in cross-cultural work
with adolescents
Vargas and Koss-Chioino contend that this is not enough and that if
the clinician is to have any reasonable hope in succeeding in cross-
cultural therapy with adolescents, he or she has to be able to transform
these “sensitivities” and “sensibilities”
4. rapid technological advances that are literally quite
breathtaking have managed to make the world not only a
“global village”(McLuhan 1968; ) but, more accurately, an
“information autobahn.”
Because of these and other facts of contemporary life, the
nature of adolescence, families, culture, and
psychotherapeutic practices is changing
drastically. EG(FAMILY)
Taffel (1996), for instance, describes
the notion of a “second family” (e.g., peer groups, youth
gangs) now being more significantly influential in a
contemporary adolescent’s life than the “first family” (i.e.,
parents).
MTV, SERIALS,Facebook, instant information services (e.g.,
Internet, satellite television, fax, pagers, e-mail,
videophones), in addition to the “old” modes of information
dissemination, such as books, magazines, newspapers, radio,
and broadcast television.
5. Cultural Perspectives on Adolescent
Development
When doing psychotherapy with adolescents, it is most important to remember that they
undergo three distinct developmental sub stages
(Shafer and Irwin 1991): early adolescence (ages 10–13 years); middle adolescence (ages
14–16 years), and late adolescence (ages 17–21 years).
Each of these sub stages has issues that are substantially different from those of the other
two and that significantly influence the expression of psychopathology and how it is
dealt with in psychotherapy.
In early adolescence, issues are primarily organized around puberty and
hormonal changes and on the corresponding impact of these changes on the
youngster and the systems surrounding him or her.
One may say that at this substage the youngster is saddled with the task of
mastering same-sex issues(e.g., initiation into youth gangs or cliques).
6. In middle adolescence, on the other hand dealing with same-sex issues, is poised to
explore opposite-sex issues.
Hence, tasks and activities are more or less bisexual, having a “push-pull” quality of
wanting to be with one’s same-sex friends, while being drawn to the “significant other.”
In late adolescence, the youngster, emerging from the struggles of the previous two
substages, is more focused on gearing up for the final goodbye to childhood and formal
initiation into the world of grown-ups.
An example of the impact of culture on adolescent developmental
stages is how the issues of sex, sexuality, and gender-identity formation
(masculinity and femininity) are handled very differently by various cultures
during the adolescent period.
Chinese-conservative,filipino-male-lady killer, female madonaa.males are perceived as
macho.
•Culture impacts these 3 adolescents substages by
1 shaping acceptable responses or ways of dealing with substages issues.
2 legitimizing responses that are socially acceptable even if these responses may be at
variance with those of adolescent’s peers,
3 providing rules and in injuction (do’s and don’ts)
7. Clinical Worldviews of the Psychotherapist
Working With Adolescents
Most, if not all, the research studies on the efficacy of psychotherapy (albeit
mostly with the adult population) have shown that it is the psychotherapist’s
personality, as well as his or her ability to instill hope and overcome
demoralization, that seems to be the one constant variable in determining
psychotherapeutic success or failure (Bergin 1971; Frank 1991; Russell 1994).
The psychotherapist’s personality becomes doubly important in providing
culturally responsive therapy to adolescents .
“personality” is probably best understood in terms of the psychotherapist’s
clinical worldviews. Clinical worldviews, or what Frank (1991) calls “assumptive
worlds,” are the therapist’s core beliefs or values regarding diagnoses(i.e.,
nature of health, disease, or illness), treatment (i.e., therapy, cure, or
management of the diagnoses), and prognosis (i.e., predicted outcome, with or
without treatment).
8. Immigration, Minority, and Ethnic
Identity Issues
Immigrant adolescents from cultures in which they were considered
“grown up” and assumed adult responsibilities will predictably
experience major acculturation problems, including significant
“psychopathologies,”
reminiscent of those of the adolescent refugees in the 1970s and 1980s
from wartorn Southeast Asian countries, such as Vietnam, Cambodia,
and Laos, who were relocated to North American and European
countries (Messer and Rasmussen1986; Nguyen and Williams 1989).
Psychotherapy with these adolescents and their significant others
(parents, legal custodians, adoptive parents) will require a lot of
psychoeducational work, particularly if the adoptive parents or legal
custodians are from another culture, because the adolescents’
“psychopathologies” could very easily be misinterpreted and
misunderstood.
9. Conclusion
Effective culture responsive psychotherapy with adolescents, the therapist must be not only sensitive but
also responsive to factors in the adolescent, himself or herself, and the psychotherapeutic process.
Culture constitutes the overarching context that provides meaning, purpose, and direction to the therapist’s
and the adolescent’s therapeutic activities. In other words, there are specific competenciest hat must be
recognized and learned if one is to be successful or, at abare minimum, to do no harm in providing
psychotherapeutic services to youngsters from different cultures.
In terms of knowledge base, the therapist must be aware of the impact of developmental substages and
psychosocial factors such as fragmentation of the family, rapid technological advances,drugs, youth gangs,
and so forth on the overall therapeutic process. Attitudinally ,the therapist must be open to exploring factors
in himself or herself that could ease and facilitate, or hinder and make difficult, working with youngsters
from a different culture.
In particular, the therapist ought to be familiar with his or her clinical worldviews and how these direct him
or her to behave in certain peculiar and predictable ways in transactions with adolescent patients.therapeutic
changes) and setting (e.g., consciously factoring in where therapy occurs to achieve maximum results—
office? mall? beach? McDonald’s)forces to achieve therapeutic goals.
10. REFERENCES
Wen-Shing Tseng, M.D.Jon Streltzer, M.D.:Culture and Psychotherapy, A
Guide to Clinical Practice,American psychiatric
press,Inc,Washington,DC,London,England, 2001,pp 193-2o6
