Filial therapy for African American families: An in-home program

Filial therapy has been shown effective with a number of populations and in a variety of environments. However, no outcome measures have been conducted to evaluate its effectiveness with African Americans. Based on the literature regarding therapy and African Americans, it is the suggestion of this paper that filial therapy would be helpful for this group, but for low-income urban African Americans, adaptations could be made that would increase its effectiveness. These adaptations include making the program home-based, shortening the program from 10 to eight weeks, emphasizing the skills-based aspect of the program, and incorporating cultural factors into the program presentation. This dissertation presents a proposed adaptation of filial therapy for this population.