The treatment of adolescents and their families in cultural transition: Issues and recommendations

Increasing numbers of immigrant families with adolescent children are seeking therapy because of intergenerational conflicts specific to the adolescent separation-individuation phase of the life cycle and transitional problems related to immigration and cultural transition. Three types of adolescent immigrants are identified and discussed: Immigrants (subtypes Reluctants and Optimists), Immigrant-Americans, and Americans. Therapists' issues which can negatively affect therapy with such adolescents and families are also discussed. Effective therapy with immigrant families requires that family therapists become more culturally sensitive, therapeutically flexible, and accepting of family values to which they may be diametrically opposed. Recommendations for therapy are offered.Dr. Baptiste is himself an immigrant. The experiences and observations discussed here are culled from his work with immigrant families and children over the past 19 years in the District of Columbia, Massachusetts, Indiana, and New Mexico.Portions of this article will appear in a chapter Psychotherapy with adolescent immigrants and their families in cultural transition in B. Settles and D. Hanks (Eds.),Families on the move: Emigration, immigration, migration and mobility. Sage Publications, 1990, and are used here with permission.