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Culture
Author(s) -
Smith Timothy B.,
Rodríguez Melanie Domenech,
Bernal Guillermo
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
journal of clinical psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.124
H-Index - 119
eISSN - 1097-4679
pISSN - 0021-9762
DOI - 10.1002/jclp.20757
Subject(s) - psychology , variety (cybernetics) , mental health , psychotherapist , adaptation (eye) , social psychology , clinical psychology , applied psychology , neuroscience , artificial intelligence , computer science
This article summarizes the definitions, means, and research of adapting psychotherapy to clients' cultural backgrounds. We begin by reviewing the prevailing definitions of cultural adaptation and providing a clinical example. We present an original meta‐analysis of 65 experimental and quasi‐experimental studies involving 8,620 participants. The omnibus effect size of d = .46 indicates that treatments specifically adapted for clients of color were moderately more effective with that clientele than traditional treatments. The most effective treatments tended to be those with greater numbers of cultural adaptations. Mental health services targeted to a specific cultural group were several times more effective than those provided to clients from a variety of cultural backgrounds. We recommend a series of research‐supported therapeutic practices that account for clients' culture, with culture‐specific treatments being more effective than generally culture‐sensitive treatments. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Clin Psychol: In Session 67:166–175, 2011.