Cultural considerations for assessment and treatment in child maltreatment cases.

The prevalence of child maltreatment is high throughout the United States: in 2011, an estimated 3.4 million referrals involving child maltreatment were received by child protective services. There is also evidence to suggest significant disparities in the experience of trauma and child maltreatment among racial/ethnic minority youths, with children of African American, American Indian, or Alaska Native descent, as well as those of multiple racial descents, having the highest rates of victimization. American Indians are a population that has not been widely studied in the child maltreatment literature. However, the extant literature on incident characteristics in the AI/AN adolescent population finds threat of injury and witnessing injury to be the most common forms of reported trauma. Sexual trauma (rape, sexual attack, molestation) was least commonly reported. A major concern cited in virtually all of the aforementioned studies is that despite these high rates of trauma exposure and subsequent mental health outcomes, a vast underutilization of mental health services is observed among these racial/ethnic minority groups. This is described in this chapter. However, there have been few evidence-based, trauma-focused interventions for child maltreatment victims from racial/ethnic minority backgrounds. This is particularly troublesome given the significant disparities in the experience of trauma and child maltreatment among racial/ethnic minority youths and the underutilization of formal mental health services consistently observed in these populations—all of which calls for novel intervention strategies to address the needs of these children. Preliminary evidence supports the efficacy of several trauma-specific interventions for racial/ ethnic minority youths, but some methodological challenges (e.g., the limited number of racial/ethnic minority participants) limit the conclusions that can be drawn from these data. Over the past few years, experts in the field have advocated the cultural adaptation of evidence-based treatments to improve engagement in treatment and mental health outcomes for racial/ethnic minority groups. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)