Ethnocultural factors in substance abuse treatment /

Published more than a decade ago, Jerome Levin's Treatment of Alcoholism and Other Addictions (CH, Oct'88) had no index entry for culture, race, or ethnicity. Bringing Cultural Diversity to Feminist Psychology, ed. by Hope Landrine (CH, Jun'96), spoke of substance abuse treatment for Native Americans and of alcohol use among Asian Americans. Now Straussner (New York Univ.) has edited an extraordinarily sensitive work on substance abuse treatment, offering clinically illustrated, expert discussion of addictive behavior and treatment within 19 distinct ethnocultural groups. Straussner includes discussions of Middle Eastern, Asian, African, Latino, European, and Native American experiences, cultural structures, and traditions. She offers a standard for the cognitive, affective, and skills dimensions of ethnocultural competency for clinicians and for the context within which treatment services are offered. Culture-specific chapters amplify the opening discussion of intervention models. For example, in evaluating current approaches among Russian-speaking clients, Helen Kagan and Kathryn Shafer indicate that alternative and herbal medicine, or pharmacotherapy, may meet with less resistance than AA-type meetings, due to the general mistrust of organized activities and the confusion about the implications of a "higher power" in Soviet-era minds. Chapter references, charts, and an extensive index increase the book's value. All general, academic, and professional collections. L. M. C. Abbott Trapp formerly, California School of Professional Psychology