Poverty: third wave behavioral approaches

• Research shows ACT can help individuals with difficulties, who also live in poverty.
• Individual therapy seems less able to address the underlying causes of poverty.
• CBS may be able to help tackle these underlying causes through wider cultural change.

This article will review the literature related to poverty and third wave behavioral approaches. It will specifically focus on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and the wider field of Contextual Behavioral Science (CBS). Having outlined CBS and poverty, this article will begin by highlighting evidence where people with psychological or physical health problems, who also live in poverty, are treated with ACT. It will then explore the possibility of tackling poverty itself and consider some limitations of traditional therapeutic approaches in this regard. Finally, it will review the potential for the CBS movement to deliver wider cultural change that reduces poverty itself. This article will speak to poverty that occurs in both the developed and developing world, although much of the evidence in relation to ACT and CBS is currently in the former.