Handbook Of Multicultural Mental Health

The Handbook of Multicultural Mental Health, Second Edition, discusses the impact of cultural, ethnic, and racial variables for the assessment, diagnosis, treatment, service delivery, and development of skills for working with culturally diverse populations. Intended for the mental health practitioner, the book translates research findings into information to be applied in practice. The new edition contains more than 50% new material and includes contributions from established leaders in the field as well as voices from rising stars in the area. It recognizes diversity as extending beyond race and ethnicity to reflect characteristics or experiences related to gender, age, religion, disability, and socioeconomic status. Individuals are viewed as complex and shaped by different intersections and saliencies of multiple elements of diversity. Chapters have been wholly revised and updated, and new coverage includes indigenous approaches to assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of mental and physical disorders; spirituality; the therapeutic needs of culturally diverse clients with intellectual, developmental, and physical disabilities; suicide among racial and ethnic groups; multicultural considerations for treatment of military personnel and multicultural curriculum and training. Foundations-overview of theory and models Specialized assessment in a multicultural context Assessing and treating four major culturally diverse groups in clinical settings Assessing and treating other culturally diverse groups in clinical settings Specific conditions/presenting problems in a cultural context Multicultural competence in clinical settings

This chapter provides an overview of the relationship between culture and psychopathology with special emphasis upon core concepts and historical forces within the study of culture and psychopathology. The chapter concludes with a discussion of future directions for inclusion of culture as essential to a full understanding of psychopathology.

Celebrating its 20th anniversary! The most internationally-cited resource in the arena of multicultural counseling, the Handbook of Multicultural Counseling by J. Manuel Casas, Lisa A. Suzuki, Charlene M. Alexander, and Margo A. Jackson is a resource for researchers, educators, practitioners, and students alike. Continuing to emphasize social justice, research, and application, the Fourth Edition of this best-seller features nearly 80 new contributors of diverse backgrounds, orientations, and levels of experience who provide fresh perspectives to every chapter. Completely updated, this classic text includes new chapters on prevailing social issues and covers the latest advances in theory, ethics, measurement, clinical practice, assessment, and more.

This chapter describes basic principles and processes in the clinical mental health interview of a person from any cultural group. Because of the author’s own background and the characteristics of his clinical work, the emphasis of the chapter is on the Hispanic/Latino group, specifically Mexican Americans. The principles outlined can apply to many types of interviews: diagnostic, psychotherapeutic, emergency, and so on. The approach can best be described as dynamic but also available to gathering information for formal DSM diagnoses and formulations. Nuances of the cross-cultural dynamic process in the areas of language, intrapersonal attitudes/feelings, communication patterns, and other areas are covered. Specific psychotherapy techniques and explicit details about diagnostic formulation are beyond the scope of this chapter and are not examined.

The highly subjective nature of illness and the frequent ambiguity in diagnosis, management, and treatment require patients and providers to frame illness experiences in terms of meaningful concepts and vocabularies. For physicians this framing is based on the language of science; for patients it is often based on cultural beliefs, practices, and local vocabularies of distress. The ambiguity inherent in the subjective experience of disease means that researchers and practitioners must be aware, not only of culturally bounded illnesses, but of the potential impact of culture on all aspects of the experience of illness. In this chapter we review a long tradition of research that illustrates the important role that culture plays in the subjective experience of illness, and we discuss the implications of culture for epidemiology, health services research, and medical practice.

A continuing evolution in both problem recognition and systematic research addressing the need for culturally equivalent and transnational versions of tests has been noted over the past decade. While the concerns and problem areas for cultural equivalence assessment research have remained relatively constant over the years, new variations of these problems have emerged. Additionally, the number and quality of studies addressing these concerns as well as related methodologies have improved and become more sophisticated. The present chapter reviews the current status of available methodologies for test translation and cultural equivalence, addresses the emergence and problems associated with computer and Internet technologies for cross-cultural testing, and provides recommendations regarding clinical approaches to selection of adapted tests for assessing culturally diverse clients.

This chapter provides an introduction to social class and classism in mental health care practice (assessment, diagnosis, and treatment), and uses the Social Class Worldview Model (SCWM) as a framework from which social class may be used to strengthen clinical practice. The authors provide counseling-relevant definitions for inequality, poverty, and affluence. As presented in the Social Class Worldview Model, it is imperative that mental health practitioners have applied definitions and frameworks to use with clients. The authors also review literature on psychological diagnosis and assessment and discuss the impact of social class on these practices. Finally, the authors discuss an important bias, Upward Mobility Bias, that may influence the ways in which clients are treated.

Indigenous psychology (IP) shares with critical health psychology a discontent with mainstream psychology and the endeavor to offer alternative formulations of health and illness. As an alternative to the individualistic framework of health in mainstream psychology, we propose a model of the self as a multilayered concentric system. For illustration, we present a variety of indigenous traditions, with special focus on the health-related beliefs and practices in India. Implications of this alternative model of culture and self for the assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of mental disorders are explored. Relevance of this framework to health psychology is discussed, with special focus on the DSM-V controversy, A. E. Kazdin’s call for health reform, and visions of hybridization in the global community.