Multicultural/Culturally-Informed Therapy (CIT) is a type of therapy that honors the unique cultural identities, backgrounds, and worldviews each client brings into the therapy room. It recognizes that culture profoundly shapes how people understand mental health, express distress, seek support, and find healing.

Rather than applying a one-size-fits-all model, CIT integrates these cultural perspectives into the heart of the therapeutic process, making treatment feel more authentic, relevant, and respectful.

The central goal of Multicultural/Culturally-Informed Therapy (CIT) is to create a therapeutic space where clients feel truly seen and understood not just as individuals, but as whole people shaped by culture, community, and lived experience.

More specifically, it aims to:

• Reduce cultural barriers to healing: Make therapy accessible and comfortable by minimizing misunderstandings or biases that might otherwise get in the way.
• Promote authentic self-expression: Create a safe environment where clients can share all parts of their identity without needing to hide or downplay their culture.
• Enhance therapeutic effectiveness: Improve outcomes by using approaches that align with clients’ values, communication styles, and ways of making meaning.
• Build on cultural strengths: Recognize and celebrate the resilience, wisdom, and traditions within each client’s culture as vital tools for healing.
• Address systemic impacts: Help clients process the effects of discrimination, racism, or displacement on mental health while building strategies for resilience.
• Develop cultural pride and identity integration: Support clients in embracing their heritage as a source of strength while navigating bicultural or multicultural identities.
• Prevent further harm: Ensure therapy does not unintentionally reinforce oppressive messages or dismiss cultural realities.

Ultimately, the goal is to co-create healing experiences that feel real and meaningful for clients, leading to growth that aligns with their cultural values and life context.

Multicultural/Culturally-Informed Therapy (CIT) can address a broad range of mental health concerns and life experiences. It is especially supportive for:

• Clients from marginalized or underrepresented communities
• People navigating immigration-related stress
• Those experiencing discrimination or racism-related trauma
• Individuals working through acculturation challenges or intergenerational trauma
• Anyone exploring cultural identity or navigating cross-cultural relationships

Yes, there are several subtypes of Multicultural/Culturally-Informed Therapy (CIT). Specialized approaches have emerged to meet the unique needs of specific groups or to incorporate cultural healing traditions. Examples include:

• Afrocentric Therapy: Grounded in African and African American cultural values, this approach emphasizes community, spirituality, and collective identity.
• Liberation Psychology: Focused on the psychological effects of oppression, this approach highlights social justice, empowerment, and collective healing.

These variations highlight the flexibility of culturally-informed care and its ability to integrate diverse traditions into therapy.

Multicultural/Culturally-Informed Therapy (CIT) didn’t come from one person at one point in time. Instead, it has grown over decades, especially since the 1960s and 1970s, through the work of many psychologists, researchers, and community leaders who recognized the urgent need to make therapy more inclusive, responsive, and equitable.

Yes, a growing body of research consistently shows that culturally-informed approaches improve outcomes for clients.

Studies highlight that they often lead to:

• Better engagement and retention: Clients are more likely to stay in treatment when it feels culturally relevant.
• Improved outcomes: Clients show stronger symptom relief and overall functioning compared to standard models.
• Stronger therapeutic alliance: Trust and connection between client and therapist deepen when cultural awareness is woven into the process.

Multicultural/Culturally-Informed Therapy (CIT) weaves cultural awareness into every step of the process. In practice, this may look like:

• Assessment and conceptualization: Therapists explore clients’ cultural backgrounds, family histories, acculturation, experiences with discrimination, spiritual practices, and cultural strengths to understand problems within a larger context.
• Therapeutic relationship building: Therapists approach with humility, acknowledging their own cultural lens and openly discussing differences to build trust.
• Treatment planning and goal setting: Goals are created collaboratively to reflect clients’ cultural values. For example, in collectivist cultures, therapy may focus on family or community harmony rather than individual independence.
• Intervention modifications: Techniques are adapted to fit cultural realities. This might include using familiar metaphors, incorporating spiritual practices, adjusting communication styles, or including family/community members.
• Addressing systemic factors: Therapists help clients process the impact of racism, oppression, or marginalization, while fostering cultural pride and resilience.
• Ongoing cultural responsiveness: Therapists check in regularly to ensure the process continues to feel culturally relevant and respectful.

Because each client’s relationship to their culture is unique, this approach remains flexible, collaborative, and deeply personalized.

Multicultural/Culturally-Informed Therapy (CIT) sessions are guided by a few key principles:

• Cultural awareness and humility: Therapists examine their own assumptions and meet each client’s culture with openness and respect.
• Contextualized understanding: Problems are seen within cultural, social, and historical contexts, not just as isolated personal struggles.
• Flexible techniques: Strategies are adapted to fit cultural preferences, whether that means adjusting communication, integrating spiritual practices, or reframing goals.
• Identity integration: Clients are encouraged to bring their whole selves—race, ethnicity, faith, gender, sexual orientation, class—into the therapy room.
• Systemic perspective: The therapy acknowledges that individual struggles often reflect broader systemic realities like racism or oppression.

Unlike traditional Western therapy models that can feel individualistic or disconnected from cultural realities, culturally-informed therapy creates space for healing that feels more inclusive, relevant, and empowering.

Multicultural/Culturally-Informed Therapy (CIT) doesn't have a rigid length or structure. Because healing looks different across individuals, this approach avoids rigid structures and instead adapts to each client’s values, needs, and expectations for change.

Together, you and your therapist will find a pace and process that feels both culturally congruent and effective for your unique situation.