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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
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Contact us: vtpu@svhm.org.au
