Bringing Psychotherapy to Immigrants

Immigrants have unique mental health challenges and treatment needs. This chapter attempts to shed light on the challenges, barriers, and potential solutions to providing psychotherapy to immigrant populations. Topics covered are language barriers, financial barriers, insurance barriers, intimate partner violence issues, cultural variables regarding disclosure issues, fear of involvement with immigration authorities, trust issues regarding political matters, limited knowledge about psychotherapy, stigma about psychotherapy, lack of knowledge about provider types, differences in symptom expression, lack of cultural sensitivity on the part of the psychotherapist, lack of adequate literature and research, and limitations posed by state licensing boards. Additionally, effective strategies and empirically supported treatments for providing mental health services to immigrants are reviewed. Future steps are recommended and reviewed, for individual clinicians and mental health professions, to reduce barriers and ensure that immigrants receive the mental health services they need and deserve.