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Culture and Empirically Supported Treatments: On the Road to a Collision?

Harvard Medical School at the Children's Hospital and Martha Eliot Health Center, USA, Martin.LaRoche{at}childrens.harvard.edu

Michael S. Christopher

Pacific University, USA, mchristopher{at}pacificu.edu

The dual influence of culturally sensitive therapies (CSTs) and empirically supported treatments (ESTs) on clinical practitioners has grown quickly in the United States. While CST advocates have been driven by the need to provide culturally diverse populations with services that are consistent with their cultural characteristics, practitioners of ESTs have striven to empirically demonstrate the benefits of psychotherapy. However, as EST's influence grows, it may increasingly threaten CST's advances. Some assumptions underlying the development of ESTs are not culturally sensitive and can be detrimental to the well-being of culturally diverse patients. This article highlights these assumptions in four interrelated areas and provides suggestions to overcome these shortcomings. Cultural assumptions and methodological implications of ESTs are presented, as well as some suggestions on how to broaden their cultural understandings. To conclude, some general recommendations on how to start bridging the gap between ESTs and CSTs are proposed.

Key Words: culture • diversity • empirically supported treatments • ethnic minorities • psychotherapy • research methods

Culture & Psychology, Vol. 14, No. 3, 333-356 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/1354067X08092637


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