| This manual is designed as a training tool for professional therapists in treatment with Persian patients. It is designed with the purpose to train clinicians in one session in being culturally competent in working with the Persian population. The findings of this research hold important implications for Iranians and non-Iranian Psychotherapists to seek education in Iranian culture and counseling issues when conducting therapy with Iranian patients. For example, the training manual could easily be translated into a continuing education workshop, where both education and in vivo training via clinical vignettes reflect cultural relevance and sensitivity. The proposed manual should be evaluated and tested given that a manual can only provide a starting point. Empirical studies may provide the way for future research. Persian culture was reviewed for methods and models. Attention is given to the role of Persian culture, treatment methods, counseling issues, cultural barriers, Iranian family, therapeutic relationship, gender roles, and adaptation to immigration in the current fund of psychological knowledge. The findings of this study confirm the applicability of a multicultural training manual for clinicians working with the Persian population. The use of a multicultural training manual is supported by the evaluators, and partially supported by research. All of the evaluators concurred that the training manual is an informative and beneficial training manual for clinicians working with Persian patients. Finally, all of the evaluators expressed that even though they are familiar with the Persian culture, this training manual provided further insight and information about cultural issues they were not aware of. They expressed that this training manual mentioned cultural issues they may have overlooked when treating Persian patients. Implications for future research is for cultural specific measures of the therapeutic effect. |
