Clinical guidelines for the cross-cultural treatment of chemical dependency

Clinicians should be skilled in work with their ethnic peers before attempting cross-cultural treatment. Acquiring cross-cultural sensitivity involves regression to childlike openness for new values, attitudes, and behaviors. Members of the ethnic group can orient the clinician by discussion, suggested readings, and invitations to their homes and ritual events. Work should begin slowly, with regular consultation from ethnic peers of the patient. Special transference issues involve parent-child transactions and the "Messianic countertransference." Clinicians must maintain their primary commitment to the patient and to the patient's social resources, rather than to an institution not responsible to the patient population.