Cross-Cultural Guidelines in Family Therapy Practice

Abstract

This article provides a description offour cross-cultural issues and specific guidelines for dealing with these issues during the family therapy process with families from the African American, American Indian, Asian, and Hispanic communities. These issues include (a) the extended family, (b) acculturation, (c) the therapist-family race similarity versus dissimilarity in assessment and treatment, and (d) the problem of biased tests and guidelines to deal with these tests. The article also summarizes key cross-cultural variables suggested in the literature to enhance the therapist-family relationship during thefirstfamily therapy session and subsequent sessions with families from these culturally diverse groups.