ABSTRACT
Structural family therapy, psychodynamic child therapy, and a recreational control condition were compared for 69 six-to-twelve-year-old Hispanic boys who presented with behavioral and emotional problems. The results suggest that the control condition was significantly less effective in retaining cases than the two treatment conditions, which were apparently equivalent in reducing behavioral and emotional problems as well as in improving psychodynamic ratings of child functioning. Structural family therapy was more effective than psychodynamic child therapy in protecting the integrity of the family at 1-year follow-up. Finally, the results did not support basic assumptions of structural family systems therapy regarding the mechanisms mediating symptom reduction.
Subject(s)
Family Therapy/methods , Mental Disorders/therapy , Psychotherapy/methods , Child , Florida , Hispanic or Latino/psychology , Humans , Male , Models, Psychological , Patient ComplianceSubject(s)
Ethnicity , Psychotherapy , Social Values , Adolescent , Adult , Aged , Cuba/ethnology , Cultural Characteristics , Female , Humans , Male , Middle Aged , United StatesABSTRACT
Mutuality of patient-therapist expectations for treatment can be attained by adapting treatment to the special characteristics and focusing treatment on the unique problems of client populations. Culturally sensitive treatment is defined as a treatment mode built on a set of therapeutic assumptions that complements the patients' basic value structure. The implications for treatment of the Cuban immigrants' preference for lineality in interpersonal relationships, a present-time orientation, a doing activity orientation, and subjugation to natural and environmental conditions are discussed. Acculturation problems facing Cuban immigrant familes and their implications for treatment are also discussed. The authors conclude that Ecological Structural Family Therapy is a treatment of choice for acculturation-related dysfunctions of Cuban immigrant families.
Subject(s)
Community Mental Health Services , Family Therapy , Cuba/ethnology , Cultural Characteristics , Florida , HumansABSTRACT
The characteristics of Cuban immigrant inhalant abusers admitted to the Spanish Family Guidance Clinic during a 1-year period were studied. Not surprisingly, this group was found to be similar to inhalant abusers in the national picture. The inhalers in this study were all males, mostly very young, from very low socioeconomic levels, largely from disrupted family backgrounds and disrupted neighborhoods. They showed poor school and/or employment performance, serious anti-social behavior, and occasional hallucinatory experiences. This group of inhalers was found to be multiple substance abusers and more likely to be characterized by a pattern of polydrug abuse than by their abuse of inhalants per se. This finding confirms a general national trend toward the abuse of multiple rather than single substances. A comparison of inhalers with a carefully chosen control group of clients admitted into the Clinic during the same period of time, matched by nationality, sex, and age, indicates that the two groups are similar in important ways. Both groups present general profiles of acting out adolescents, and tend to come from low socioeconomic, disrupted families and poor neighborhoods.
