Role of Culture in Mental Health

8070 Words33 Pages
Running head: CULTURE AND PSYCHOPATHOLOGY Obstacles in Assessing, Understanding, and Treating Child Psychopathology: A Cultural Perspective Abstract Culture refers to the values, beliefs, and practices shared by a group of individuals. Its impact on child mental health is immense, raising concerns about current clinical practices in Canada. More specifically, culture influences parental views about mental health, leading to different patterns of help seeking. A scarcity of culturally sensitive assessment tools also creates challenges throughout the assessment process. Manifestation of disorders has been shown to vary cross-culturally, threatening the validity of existing diagnostic criteria in terms of capturing the full spectrum of a disorder presentation. Finally, beliefs about etiology and what is considered an appropriate intervention challenge the effectiveness of existing treatment protocols. This paper will discuss the obstacles culture presents in all these three domains, with examples from a variety of cultures. Obstacles in Assessing, Understanding, and Treating Child Psychopathology: A Cultural Perspective The term culture has yet to be clearly defined. In a broader sense of the word, culture includes aspects such as sexual orientation, religion, or socioeconomic status. However, more strictly speaking, culture is associated with one’s ethnicity or background. Currently, the most accepted definition describes culture as a set of values, beliefs, and practices that pertain to a given ethnocultural group (Bentacourt & Lopez, 1993). A more elaborate definition of culture was provided by Marsella & Yamada (2000) who suggest that culture refers to: “Shared learned meanings and behaviors that are transmitted from within a social activity context
Open Document