| Abstract: | This article describes culture shock as an adjustment reaction syndrome which affects sojourners intellectually, emotionally, behaviorally, and physiologically. A brief review of the literature shows that while various theories regarding the etiology of culture shock have been proffered, and many crosscultural training methods developed for dealing with different aspects of culture shock, to date no treatment has been designed which responds to the needs of sojourners experiencing stress in the four areas mentioned. Therefore a treatment was designed which integrates various cross-cultural training methods with psychotherapeutic techniques in order to provide sojourners with coping skills for dealing with the multilevel impact of culture shock. The treatment was implemented with 64 North Americans who had recently arrived in Costa Rica to study Spanish. A group of students, designated the control group, received no treatment. The next group of students to arrive at the school was offered the 6 week treatment. Both groups of subjects were tested at the end of 12 weeks, using the SCL-90-R, a multidimensional self-report inventory designed to measure symptomatic psychological distress. Treatment and control group subjects were matched on eight control variables and their scores on the SCL-90-R were compared using the t test for correlated samples. Statistical analysis yielded a significant difference between groups with p < .01. It may therefore be inferred that the treatment model described here is effective in reducing symptoms of psychological distress for sojourners similar to those in this study. |
