Clinical Round Table 7 - Nuances, Not New Mechanisms of Action: Culturally Sensitive Treatment Of, and Research About, an Overlooked Minority

Often miscategorized as “White” or “Caucasian,” due to the majority of American Jewish people being of Ashkenazi European descent (Pew Research Center, 2021), 12% of Jewish adults identify as non-white (Ben-Porath, 2024). Jewish people hail from multiple ethnic and cultural origins (Rand, 2023) and historically and currently are treated as an outgroup (Walker et al., 2024). Irrespective of current religious affiliation, belief, or praxis, these ethnic-cultural groups share common protective factors such as identity, values, norms, shared history, religion, spirituality, and sense of local community that may be leveraged in psychotherapy as sources of coping, resilience, perseverance, and wellness (Krieger, 2010; Rosenbach, Salamon, & Levine, 2022; Masten, 2018). Jewish people also share negative experiences that pose current or historical risk factors for mental health (Shani, 2025), such as generational trauma, stereotype threat, overt discriminatory and internalized antisemitism (Schmitt, 2014; Kaufman, 2020), and threats of losing cultural or spiritual identity. Many of these factors are important in Jewish identity formation (Friedman, Friedlander, & Bluestein, 2005).

As Jews are a minority at 2.4% of the US population (Pew Research Center, 2021), clinicians may lack personal and clinical experience with Jewish patients. Therapists who encounter Jewish patients can benefit from becoming aware of their own biases toward this religious minority group (Walker et al., 2024; Schlosser, 2006), and education to distinguish culturally reinforced and adaptive habits from clinical symptoms (Huppert, Siev, & Kushner, 2007; Abramowitz & Jacoby, 2014). These factors have implications for assessment, psychosocial intervention, program development, and research. Our panelists, who have extensive clinical and/or research experience with this population, will address these implications, highlighting examples across anxiety- and trauma-related disorders; obsessive compulsive spectrum (e.g. scrupulosity); and models of resilience across the lifespan.