Cross-Cultural Barriers to Mental Health

Cross-Cultural Barriers to Mental Health

For any typical White citizens of contemporary American society, receiving medical treatment is a challenge, particularly for those who are insured and/or unable to afford coverage, but for members of ethnic and racial groups, the problem is exacerbated by other variables such as their unfamiliarity with the language, cultural views of treatment and therapy, lack of access to appropriate care, and deficiency of scientific / social studies in the ways to help nonwhite populations overcoming the problem. This essay formulates the challenges that are holding cross-cultural populations back from seeking and receiving mental health treatment and formulates a policy that is structured to address this problem.

The problem

According to both Leong and Kalibatseva (2011) and Leong and Lau (2001), the four barriers standing in the way of ethnic minorities seeking treatment are: cognitive, affective, value-orientation, and physical / spiritual:

Cognitive: people's conception of the etiology, phenomenology, and treatments of mental health diseases hinge upon their cultural treatment of the phenomenon. Western culture, for instance, prescribes Cartesian distinction between mind and body (therefore dividing disease into the mental health and physical health spectrum), whereas Asian cultures may conflate diseases of mind with disease of body accordingly seeking a medical practitioner to address both. Other cultural transmissions may include the belief that willpower overcomes mental health problems or that it is unfitting for males to indicate such concerns.

2. Affective: "family name and "face" are important to some cultures. Seeking mental health assistance will often likely negatively impact reputation and image with far-reaching consequences for family (that may involve marriage, employment, and so forth). These may serve as powerful deterrents to soliciting assistance.

Other deterrents include instances of cultural insensitivity and misdiagnosis to certain populations, such as applying inaccurate psychological measures and erroneous theories to African-Americans (such as the genetic deficit model that, comparing Africans to Caucasians, pronounces genetic variables of Afro-American to be poorer than those of Caucasians hence negatively effecting intelligence quotient).

3. Value orientation barriers: Some cultures emphasize that personal / and family health problems should be kept to oneself. Exposing these issues and elaborating on them at length to a stranger may be perceived as uninviting and off-putting to an individual from a collectivistic tradition.

4. Physical and structural barriers: These include many items such as one or a combination of the following: the lack of information; lack of access to available services; economic inability to afford the service; language difficulties in communication; and geographical distance from available service.

Recommended policy

To deal with these difficulties, several recommendations can be formulated:

1. Cross-cultural variables: Ethnic matches should be arranged between client and therapist. These will be effective in dealing not only with communication problems, but also with cultural perceptions of the disease as well as with possible social stigmas attached to the disease. The therapist, sharing similar cultural background to the patient understands the patient's concern and speaks the patient's language therefore is more able than another to 'pull' her through.

Other recommendations include items such as that Government should allocate more funding to establishing specific mental health treatments that are run by and appeal to the various ethnic minorities. In a similar manner, government should increase their funding for research and clinical training of ethnic and racial minority members (e.g. The minority Fellowship Program and the COR). Finally, general Mental health services should incorporate cross-cultural communication variables in their general service (so as to appeal to the population as a whole) and mental health professionals, accordingly, should be trained in cultural competency. Materials in various languages should be published and disseminated publicizing the need and for and benefits of mental health services; and outreach to underserved groups should be conducted.