Portuguese-Americans and Mental Health Treatment Client-Therapist Ethnic Match, Ethnic Identity, and Satisfaction with Treatment
Multicultural issues in psychotherapy have increasingly been recognized as important in the provision of mental health services to our diverse population. Issues such as beliefs about mental health, attitudes toward authority, and even world view affect how clients access and make use of psychotherapy. Cultural views are essential to how one sees the world, and consequently there is much debate about whether clients would benefit from having therapists from the same cultural background. Ethnic identity, or the degree to which a person holds to the beliefs of their culture of origin, consequently plays an important role in psychotherapy. The Portuguese culture is one that has limited areas of settlement, but that accounts for a significant portion of the population in certain areas. They are an understudied population in the literature on multicultural counseling. This study examined the relationships among the variables of client-therapist ethnic match, degree of ethnic identity, and level of satisfaction with therapy. Twenty-four Portuguese-Americans, aged 23 to 58, who were currently in psychotherapy completed questionnaires measuring ethnic identity and satisfaction with therapy. Satisfaction did not differ between those who had ethnically similar therapists and those who had non-Portuguese therapists. However, for those with ethnically matched therapists, satisfaction with therapy was significantly correlated with Portuguese ethnic identity. Clients with high ethnic identity were more satisfied with therapy than clients with low ethnic identity. Clients whose families had immigrated in more recent generations were confirmed to have a higher ethnic identity than those whose families had been in the United States for generations. There was a trend for clients to be more satisfied if their families were involved in therapy, although this was not statistically significant. Clinical implication of these findings and directions for future research are discussed.
Client-therapist, Ethnic identity, Mental health treatment, Portuguese-Americans, Satisfaction with treatment, Ethnic Studies, Mental and Social Health, Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, Social Psychology
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