Vida Alegre: Teaching Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in Spanish

Bilingual social workers need specialized training to provide effective mental health services to Spanish-speaking Latinos. Ideally, this training should use the language in which the social workers plan to practice. This article describes an innovative two-semester course offered in Spanish that prepared advanced undergraduate and graduate students to use a cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) intervention (Vida Alegre). In the first semester, students learned CBT methods using Vida Alegre training materials. In the second, they conducted a service-learning project that included facilitating a CBT group under the supervision of an instructor. We review their challenges and lessons learned and provide future recommendations.