Bicultural/ Bilingual Psychotherapy

The Center for International Psychological Services provides psychological services for clients with various cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Established in 2003, we are the first institution in Asia that provides English/Korean bilingual psychotherapy treatment as well as a formal psychological/psycho-educational assessment. Dr. Yong Cho, as a New York licensed psychologist, started his culture sensitive treatment in early 2000 in New York. He and his treatment team in Seoul provide bilingual and bicultural services for adults and child/adolescent population around the world.  

For the past decades, we have been giving new hope and future for English speaking international school students, teachers and their family in Asia, English speaking ex-patriate population in Asia, and boarding school students in the US and Europe. We have been working closely with open-minded schools around the world that trust our mission and philosophy of helping the students with the highest quality and of relieving human suffering as our primary mission.   

We are providing comprehensive psychological/psycho-educational assessment for English speaking and bilingual clients that meets global standard. The accurate diagnosis and recommendations are delivered to parents and school professionals. 

It is common for children and adolescents who experience language transfer delays suffer from various emotional/behavioral disorders. Transferred students from non-English countries like Korea often experience new language and culture related adjustment related difficulties; special attention should be given to those population to prevent their adjustment issues and secondary symptoms such as a full-blown depression, anxiety, conduct disorder, game addiction, etc. 

Our English/bilingual acquisition treatment program analyzes comprehensive psycho-educational assessment and develops individualized behavioral and psycho-educational strategies. With parents’ permission, we share our findings with school professionals. Most of the English speaking international and boarding schools actively share information with us on behalf of the students and collaborate to facilitate their adjustment in school. Some schools develop their own individualized educational plan for a proper modification to meet the needs of the students. 

After identifying the students’ cognitive, psychological, language development issues that delay English acquisition, our clinicians develop a systematic treatment plan. The students who are failing successful English language transfer often exhibit various kinds of secondary emotional and behavioral symptoms. The first target goals for psychotherapy treatment are to reduce those presented emotional and behavioral symptoms.  

Individualized psycho-educational treatment plan is developed to improve under-developed or deterred cognitive and language functioning which is often the primary underlying issues of secondary emotional and behavioral symptoms.  

Since 2003, Dr. Cho and his treatment team have evaluated struggling child/adolescent students with a scientific approach; and they have developed an individualized psycho-educational program to improve students’ language development in addition to clinical treatment. Our combined clinical and psycho-educational program ultimately prevents permanent academic delays at new school settings and lowers subsequent psychological distress; and it facilitates students’ successful adjustment to English speaking schools and maximizes their intellectual potential.