Culturally Diverse Children and Adolescents: Assessment, Diagnosis, and Treatment

Mental health professionals working with children are often faced with a number of obstacles from determining the situation specificity of the problem behavior to ascertaining the influence of the child's developmental level. When the clients are minority children, the clinical challenge is often compounded: Clinicians must move beyond the limitations of traditional assessment, diagnostic, and treatment approaches and learn how to determine the impact of cultural differences, poverty, discrimination, and acculturation issues. Addressing each of these elements, this important new volume shows mental health service providers how to work with economically disadvantaged children and adolescents from culturally diverse backgrounds. The book concentrates on the mental health needs of primarily those African-American, Latino, Asian-American, and American Indian children who are subject to numerous social stressors and whose families represent the lower socioeconomic levels. Chapters provide useful theoretical constructs, suggest concrete ways to interpret assessments, and outline effective treatment approaches. Illustrated with numerous clinical vignettes, the book clearly describes how to elicit relevant history from the child, caretakers, family, and school officials; utilize diagnostic criteria in a culturally appropriate way; and intervene - using innovative treatment strategies. Throughout, long-standing misconceptions and myths are exposed, as readers acquire the skills needed to recognize and reinforce the strengths that often exist amid what can look like insurmountable problems. Comprehensively addressing the wide range of issues one encounters in the treatment of minority children, this book is a valuable resource for psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, and psychiatric nurses. Providing explicit, step-by-step details on the assessment and treatment of minority children Culturally Diverse Children and Adolescents also serves as an excellent text for courses in these disciplines.