As the text by Griner & Smith (2006) asserts, "There is a pressing need to enhance the availability and quality of mental health services provided to persons from historically disadvantaged racial and ethnic groups. Many previous authors have advocated that traditional mental health treatments be modified to better match clients' cultural contexts." (Griner & Smith, p. 531)
Where Native Americans are concerned, this denotes the need for an outreach campaign that is simultaneously intended to promote better awareness of proper dietary, nutritional, health and wellness strategies while also showing a recognition of the clear conditions of disadvantage which have contributed to the Native American plight. Certainly, evidence suggests that any such counseling will be conducted against the grain of a long-standing cultural adaptation of negative nutritional and lifestyle decisions. According to Huber (2008), "beginning in the 1930s, government commodity programs and other factors led to very poor eating habits by Native Americans. Bad diseases, like diabetes and hypertension, quickly followed, almost like an epidemic shadow." (Huber, p. 1)
This suggests a counseling scenario which must be conscious of the cultural experiences that have helped to create the disproportionate health risks facing the population. The same is true of alcohol counseling or rehabilitation, which the research by French (2007) reports must be conducted from the same transcultural perspective that describes so many Native American lives. Such is to...
And the tribal life on the research, counseling must respect this experience. According to French, "treating Native Americans merely from the conventional clinical perspective spells of ethnocentrism while a pure traditional approach often serves to restrict both off-reservation mobility and inter-tribal interactions. Here the transcultural approach offers a needed bridge for effective Native American alcohol and mental health counseling." (French, p. 1)
By combining these strategies with health and nutrition education, it may be possible to help Native American populations drastically improve their own chance for an advance in living standards and life expectancy. It is true that a great many inequities have been visited upon the Native American people. But with the proper support, it is possible to redress some of these inequities in the realm of health.
Works Cited:
American Diabetes Association (ADA). (2008). Native American Diabetes Resources. vltakaliseji.tripod.com/
Lee, E.T.; Welty, T.K.; Cowan, L.D. et al. (2002). Incidence of diabetes in American Indians of three geographic areas: The Strong Heart Study. Diabetes Care, 25(1), 49-54.
Griner, D. & Smith, T.B. (2006). Culturally Adapted Mental Health Intervention: A Meta-Analytic Review. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training, 43(4), 531-548.
Huber, G. (2008). The value of our ancestral diet. Tyler Morning Telegraph.
