Case Study 10

The following case study illustrates family therapy with Indian migrant parents, acculturation issues with adolescents, and recommendations for psychosocial engagement. The case study provides a question for viewers to consider and reflect on.

Case Study 10: Family therapy (Indian)

(Adapted from Baptiste, 2005).

Dr Patel and his wife are doctors, an ear, nose, and throat specialist and a GP respectively. Their son Divesh (age 16) was referred for family therapy by a colleague, 10 years after migrating to New Zealand. A younger son (age 12) and a daughter (age 5), complete the family. At interview, the parents, in particular the mother, presented a long and detailed list of Divesh’s transgressions which included: partying on the weekends and staying out later than his parents approved, staying over at a Kiwi friend’s home without parental permission, drinking beer and eating hamburgers (the family was vegetarian), dressing in ways unacceptable to his parents, and most damaging of all, he wanted to study to become a psychologist rather than the doctor his parents expected him to be. According to his mother, Divesh had been a model child until a year ago. She said, ‘‘he listened to his parents and did not give us trouble”. All that changed when he joined the school soccer team and began to associate more closely with his Kiwi peers in the team. His mother attributed Divesh’s behavioural and attitudinal changes to the negative influences of three specific teammates whom she accused of corrupting Divesh such that he had become ‘‘more like a Kiwi child than the Indian child they believed they were raising’’. Divesh’s mother’s perception of Kiwi children and parents, in particular adolescents and their parents, was very unflattering; she believed herself to be a much better parent than her Kiwi counterparts. As a result of the parental objections, Divesh was withdrawn from the soccer team and many of the freedoms he previously enjoyed were severely curtailed. Divesh’s mother’s displeasure with Kiwi culture intensified when the soccer coach visited the parents to persuade them to allow Divesh to rejoin the team. She concluded that the coach was more interested in Divesh ‘‘becoming a soccer player than being a good boy who listens to his parents.’’ He did not rejoin the team.

Divesh was very critical of his mother. He accused her of, ‘‘liking to be in New Zealand for the money but not liking Kiwis’’, and ‘‘thinking that you are better than everybody and wanting me to be Indian in New Zealand’’. From his perspective, the behaviours his mother found objectionable were necessary to ‘‘fit in’’ with his peers. He pointed out that he still maintained very high marks in high school and was a member of the chess and mathematics clubs. Furthermore he did not complain much when his parents, primarily his mother, refused to buy him a car, ‘‘even though you can afford it.’’ Divesh’s father did not say much, but what he said was less intense than his wife. He acknowledged the difficulty of raising children in New Zealand given ‘‘the night and day’’ differences of expectations for children’s behaviours in NZ and India. He also acknowledged that, ‘‘Divesh is a good boy’’ and that ‘‘everything was different for all of us.’’ He solicited the therapist’s assistance to find the family ‘‘a workable middle ground.’’ Accordingly, therapy focused on helping Divesh and his parents to explore compromises and alternatives to being polarised, within a workable middle ground.