Date of Conferral

2022

Degree

Ph.D.

School

Counselor Education and Supervision

Advisor

Ithuriel Gale

Abstract

Many families immigrating to the United States come fleeing adverse conditions in their home countries. Conditions such as war, political oppression, and economic hardship frequently result in a need for mental health services. This includes not only the adults in the family but also the children. However, because of their limited English proficiency, their access to mental health services frequently requires the use of interpretive services (IS). The body of knowledge on the use of IS in counseling is limited. The use of IS must be seen from a cultural perspective, hence Ridley et al.’s process model of multicultural counseling competency supports this research where IS is seen as a cultural broker. There is a dearth of research examining the use of IS in providing counseling to children. This ex post facto study used de-identified data from clinical records (n=36) to compare the variable of treatment outcomes of pediatric and adolescent clients, ages 4-17 years, who did and did not receive IS. A two-way repeated measure analysis of variance was used to address the research question to see if there were differences in treatment outcomes between clients who used IS and those who did not over time. The dependent variable was treatment outcomes and independent variables were the presence or absence of IS and time. This study found that there were no significant differences in treatment outcomes between groups. Findings from this study confirm that IS services may help counselors in achieving beneficial outcomes even when working with children who cannot directly communicate with counselors in their languages.

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