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Education & Professional Development Program

Aims

  • To improve the quality of the transcultural clinical interaction between clients and clinicians of diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds
  • To improve access to and provision of mental health services for people of culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds
  • To advance the development of quality transcultural mental health education for clinicians and others engaged with the health and welfare of CALD clients
  • To contribute to equity of access and treatment in the mental health system that serves a multicultural population

Objectives

  • To develop and deliver appropriate educational and professional development programs responsive to the needs of mental health clinicians and the CALD communities they serve
  • To collaborate with other health care providers to produce educational and professional development programs to extend transcultural mental health knowledge and skills to a wider audience
  • To develop, collect and share appropriate educational materials and resources for transcultural mental health educationTo improve the quality of the transcultural clinical interaction between clients and clinicians of diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds
  • To collaborate with Area Mental Health Services managers in planning transcultural mental health education and professional development for their respective staff

Content

Seminars, interactive workshops and short teaching sessions form the basis of the program. In addition occasional lectures are given to undergraduate or postgraduate students where appropriate.

Teaching programs are based on an ‘awareness, knowledge and skills’ model (Pedersen, 1994) which addresses affective learning (attitudes and feelings), cognitive learning (facts) and kinaesthetic learning (skills). This is designed to cover a wide range of transcultural subject areas including prejudice and discrimination which may occur in mental health settings. Short sessions usually last for a minimum of 2 hours, and one day or two day workshops are offered twice a year, under the titles of Culture & Mental Health, Communication & Mental Health and Difference & Mental Health. Both workshops and short teaching sessions are available in rural areas by arrangement.

The scope of relevant teaching modules reflects the varying needs and perspectives of area mental health services across adult, elderly, child and adolescent sectors: These range from the more general and abstract to the more specific:

  • Assessment of mood and affect across cultures
  • Assessment of thought disorder and insight across cultures
  • Birthing, child-rearing, maternal mental health and culture
  • Cognitive assessment across cultures
  • Cross-cultural beliefs and explanatory models of illness
  • Cross-cultural clinical assessment
  • Cross-cultural communication in mental health settings
  • Cross-cultural counselling in mental health and PDRS service settings
  • Cross-cultural psychotherapies
  • Cultural construction of the self: values of the Western-trained clinician and the non-Western client
  • Cultural differences in normative development
  • Cultural issues in child and adolescent mental health
  • Cultural issues in the clinical relationship
  • Culturally sensitive mental health practice
  • Explanatory models of illness and idioms of distress
  • Folk therapies and culture specific therapies
  • Gender, age, and social status variables across cultures
  • Intergenerational dissonance in CALD communities
  • Mental health and welfare of international students
  • Migration and settlement experience
  • Palliative care, bereavement, grief and culture
  • Perspectives in vicarious traumatisation
  • Refugee and asylum seeker mental health
  • Relationship of culture, ethnicity and mental health
  • Second generation Australians and mental health
  • Spiritual and religious approaches to healing
  • The cultural construction of gender in relation to mental health and illness
  • Traditional cultural and religious value systems
  • Transcultural clinical case discussion
  • Transgenerational trauma in relation to migration, second generation, and indigenous experience
  • Understanding CALD carer and consumer perspectives
  • Working effectively with CALD families and carers
  • Working effectively with interpreters

Program content is developed after a needs analysis of a particular area mental health service or agency and its relevant catchment population. Each session is evaluated by participants which process then assists in the development of further programs on similar topics, for similar or different audiences. Subject areas listed above have been developed as discrete modules which may be modified to best suit each audience. Teaching strategies include interactive delivery, activities in small groups, use of video clips to stimulate discussion, and specialist presenters where appropriate.

The transcultural mental health paradigm applied to education requires the learner to engage in a reflective exploration of his/her own cultural and ethnic background, including values systems and religious context. For many clinicians, this is a new and challenging focus, but once explored and connected to their own clientele and fields of work, develops empathy for and understanding of ‘the other’. This activity may form the basis for affective learning and attitudinal change.

Transcultural mental health knowledge focuses on significant details or events important in minority group history and experience, e.g. refugee and indigenous experience of displacement and loss, major world events causing people to migrate or flee their country of origin, or the range of causes - natural, psychological and supernatural - to which people attribute illness. Participants learn to accumulate relevant cultural knowledge from their clients during the course of their active professional practice, and are then able to place this within a cultural values framework.

Transcultural mental health skills refer to specific activities needed for everyday work with patients or clients from large number of ethnic minorities: e.g. working with interpreters, performing a cultural assessment, cross-cultural verbal and non-verbal communication, monitoring and repairing misunderstandings and conflict mediation.

Programs

  Last updated: 15 September, 2007
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