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.
This open access book offers essential information on values-based practice (VBP): the clinical skills involved, teamwork and person-centered care, links between values and evidence, and the importance of partnerships in shared decision-making. Different cultures have different values; for example, partnership in decision-making looks very different, from the highly individualized perspective of European and North American cultures to the collective and family-oriented perspectives common in South East Asia. In turn, African cultures offer yet another perspective, one that falls between these two extremes (called batho pele). The book will benefit everyone concerned with the practical challenges of delivering mental health services. Accordingly, all contributions are developed on the basis of case vignettes, and cover a range of situations in which values underlie tensions or uncertainties regarding how to proceed in clinical practice. Examples include the patient’s autonomy and best interest, the physician’s commitment to establishing high standards of clinical governance, clinical versus community best interest, institutional versus clinical interests, patients insisting on medically unsound but legal treatments etc. Thus far, VBP publications have mainly dealt with clinical scenarios involving individual values (of clinicians and patients). Our objective with this book is to develop a model of VBP that is culturally much broader in scope. As such, it offers a vital resource for mental health stakeholders in an increasingly inter-connected world. It also offers opportunities for cross-learning in values-based practice between cultures with very different clinical care traditions.
Cross-cultural research is now an undeniable part of mainstream psychology and has had a major impact on conceptual models of human behavior. Although it is true that the basic principles of social psychological methodology and data analysis are applicable to cross-cultural research, there are a number of issues that are distinct to it, including managing incongruities of language and quantifying cultural response sets in the use of scales. Cross-Cultural Research Methods in Psychology provides state-of-the-art knowledge about the methodological problems that need to be addressed if a researcher is to conduct valid and reliable cross-cultural research. It also offers practical advice and examples of solutions to those problems and is a must-read for any student of culture.
From specialists in several disciplines—psychiatry, general medicine, anthropology, sociology, and social work—the editors of this volume have assembled reports on a search for ways of identifying mentally ill people in other cultures and of determining what kinds of sociocultural factors influence the origin, course, and outcome of psychiatric disorders. The contributors have approached the subject through reviews of the literature, seminar discussions, and exploratory field studies carried out in Nova Scotia and among Eskimos, Navahos, and Mexicans. The book provides a methodological approach to important issues and problems in an area in which there is as yet only limited and uncertain knowledge. It will be useful to psychiatrists and epidemiologists working outside their own cultures, to psychologists and anthropologists, and as a handbook for specialists in mental health.
Some of the most innovative and provocative work on the emotions and illness is occurring in cross-cultural research on depression. Culture and Depression presents the work of anthropologists, psychiatrists, and psychologists who examine the controversies, agreements, and conceptual and methodological problems that arise in the course of such research. A book of enormous depth and breadth of discussion, Culture and Depression enriches the cross-cultural study of emotions and mental illness and leads it in new directions. It commences with a historical study followed by a series of anthropological accounts that examine the problems that arise when depression is assessed in other cultures. This is a work of impressive scholarship which demonstrates that anthropological approaches to affect and illness raise central questions for psychiatry and psychology, and that cross-cultural studies of depression raise equally provocative questions for anthropology. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1987. Some of the most innovative and provocative work on the emotions and illness is occurring in cross-cultural research on depression. Culture and Depression presents the work of anthropologists, psychiatrists, and psychologists who examine the controversies
"As I sat down to write this chapter about the use of life story methods for capturing cultural-historical aspects of LGBTQ+ identity development, I was transported back in time... It was a hot summer day in 2004. I had travelled back from the "big city" where I was attending university to visit my family. This was my first summer away from home. At that moment, my family and I sat in the parking lot of a diner, having just finished breakfast at a local greasy spoon-a ritualistic send off before I started my four-hour return drive. In those moments, our car felt unusually cramped. My dad was in the back seat with me, my mom and brother in the front. I didn't have much of an appetite that morning knowing that in mere minutes, I would come out to my family as gay. On our way out of the restaurant, walking to our separate cars, I somehow managed to muster up the courage to tell my family there was something important I wanted them to know. So, there I was, in the backseat of the car with a message for my family. Looking back on it, the message was more like an ultimatum. They could learn to love this new version of me, as I had done, or our routine "see you later" might be a "goodbye." This is the beginning of my story-both my coming out story and, in some ways, my life story. Thankfully, my family is still an important part of this story"--
This book situates the essential areas of psychology within a cultural perspective, exploring the relationship of culture to psychological phenomena, from introduction and research foundations to clinical and social principles and applications. • Includes contributions from an experienced, international team of researchers and teachers • Brings together new perspectives and research findings with established psychological principles • Organized around key issues of contemporary cross-cultural psychology, including ethnocentrism, diversity, gender and sexuality and their role in research methods • Argues for the importance of culture as an integral component in the teaching of psychology