Cross-cultural care for PTSD: Research, training, and service needs for the future

Treating the consequences of violence in refugees, immigrants, and other minority groups is complicated by several factors. One of these factors involves the treatment of such problems, which are often related to both past violence as well as to current adverse conditions or precipitants. Another factor relates to cross-cultural assessment and treatment, which requires special education, experience, and supervision. Thirdly, there is usually the matter of concurrent acculturation, which may be undermined by biopsychosocial maladjustment due to past violence and which may in turn precipitate psychiatric syndromes that are related to previous violence. The future implications of these factors for research, training, and service needs are reviewed in this paper.