Multicultural therapy over time

de Yevette Brown, Jon M. Tullos

"In Multicultural Therapy Over Time, Melba J.T. Vasquez demonstrates this important and influential model, one that has recently infused a number of approaches to psychotherapy. Multicultural therapy takes into consideration racial and ethnic diversity as well as diversity in spirituality, sexual orientation, disabilities, class, and the potential cultural bias of practitioners. Although there is no single multicultural therapy, multicultural theory has influenced many approaches to be more sensitive to the history of the oppressed and marginalized, acculturation issues, and the politics of power. Dr. Vasquez demonstrates her own approach, which contains three elements: cultural sensitivity (an awareness and appreciation of human cultural diversity), cultural knowledge (including factual information about cultural variation), and cultural empathy (the ability to connect emotionally with the patient's cultural perspective). In this approach. In this approach, one must make decisions about when and how a person's problems relate to or are mediated by cultural factors, as not every problem is necessarily related or best treated by emphasizing culture."--Container.