A thought-provoking handbook for practitioners, students and trainers in the mental health field. Addresses controversial issues and offers revealing insights and intelligent suggestions for all those involved with mental health.

Based on a recently completed project of cultural consultation in Montreal, Cultural Consultation presents a model of multicultural and applicable health care. This model used clinicians and consultants to provide in-depth assessment, treatment planning, and limited interventions in consultation with frontline primary care and mental health practitioners working with immigrants, refugees, and members of indigenous and ethnocultural communities. Evaluation of the service has demonstrated that focused interventions by consultants familiar with patients’ cultural backgrounds could improve the relationship between the patient and the primary clinician. This volume presents models for intercultural work in psychiatry and psychology in primary care, general hospital and specialty mental health settings. The editors highlight crucial topics such as: - Discussing the social context of intercultural mental health care, conceptual models of the role of culture in psychopathology and healing, and the development of a cultural consultation service and a specialized cultural psychiatric service - Examining the process of intercultural work more closely with particular emphasis oto strategies of consultation, the identity of the clinician, the ways in which gender and culture position the clinician, and interaction of the consultant with family systems and larger institutions - Highlighting special situations that may place specific demands on the clinician: working with refugees and survivors of torture or political violence, with separated families, and with patients with psychotic episodes This book is of valuable use to mental health practitioners who are working in multidisciplinary settings who seek to understand cultural difference in complex cases. Psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, nurse practitioners, primary care providers and trainees in these disciplines will make thorough use of the material covered in this text.

This is the definitive textbook on global mental health, an emerging priority discipline within global health, which places priority on improving mental health and achieving equity in mental health for all people worldwide.

The second edition of this popular introductory text explores the many sensitive issues of culture, race and ethnicity as they affect patient care, including: -health and illness beliefs, and their relationship to religious beliefs -mental health and culture -women's health in a multicultural society -caring for older people death and bereavement All chapters have been updated to present the latest theory and practice and new chapters on men's health and cultural care, and migration and asylum seekers have been added, along with updated case studies and reflective exercises to help the reader link theory to practice. This book is essential reading for all nursing students, as well as midwifery, allied health and health and social care students. It is also a useful reference for qualified nurses, midwives, health care assistants, assistant healthcare practitioners and allied health professionals.

The publication of the Cultural Formulation Outline in the DSM-IV represented a significant event in the history of standard diagnostic systems. It was the first systematic attempt at placing cultural and contextual factors as an integral component of the diagnostic process. The year was 1994 and its coming was ripe since the multicultural explosion due to migration, refugees, and globalization on the ethnic composition of the U.S. population made it compelling to strive for culturally attuned psychiatric care. Understanding the limitations of a dry symptomatological approach in helping clinicians grasp the intricacies of the experience, presentation, and course of mental illness, the NIMH Group on Culture and Diagnosis proposed to appraise, in close collaboration with the patient, the cultural framework of the patient's identity, illness experience, contextual factors, and clinician-patient relationship, and to narrate this along the lines of five major domains. By articulating the patient's experience and the standard symptomatological description of a case, the clinician may be better able to arrive at a more useful understanding of the case for clinical care purposes. Furthermore, attending to the context of the illness and the person of the patient may additionally enhance understanding of the case and enrich the database from which effective treatment can be planned. This reader is a rich collection of chapters relevant to the DSM-IV Cultural Formulation that covers the Cultural Formulation's historical and conceptual background, development, and characteristics. In addition, the reader discusses the prospects of the Cultural Formulation and provides clinical case illustrations of its utility in diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders. Book jacket.

New in Paperback. This book presents a practical, step-by-step approach to integrating multicultural sensitivity into one's clinical practice.