Transcultural Psychiatry 

About: Transcultural Psychiatry is an academic journal published by SAGE Publishing. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Mental health & Poison control. It has an ISSN identifier of 1363-4615. Over the lifetime, 1317 publications have been published receiving 35974 citations.

Cultural Continuity as a Hedge against Suicide in Canada's First Nations

Abstract: This research report examines self-continuity and its role as a protective factor against suicide. First, we review the notions of personal and cultural continuity and their relevance to understanding suicide among First Nations youth. The central theoretical idea developed here is that, because it is constitutive of what it means to have or be a self to somehow count oneself as continuous in time, anyone whose identity is undermined by radical personal and cultural change is put at special risk of suicide for the reason that they lose those future commitments that are necessary to guarantee appropriate care and concern for their own well-being. It is for just such reasons that adolescents and young adults - who are living through moments of especially dramatic change - constitute such a high-risk group. This generalized period of increased risk during adolescence can be made even more acute within communities that lack a concomitant sense of cultural continuity which might otherwise support the efforts o...

Rethinking cultural competence

Abstract: In recent years, cultural competence has become a popular term for a variety ofstrategies to address the challenge of cultural diversity in mental health services.This issue of Transcultural Psychiatry presents papers from the McGill AdvancedStudy Institute in Cultural Psychiatry on ‘‘Rethinking Cultural Competencefrom International Perspectives,’’ which was held in Montreal, April 27and 28, 2010. Selected papers from the meeting have been supplemented withother contributions to the journal that fit the theme. Taken together, thesepapers show how conceptual analysis and critique of cultural competence canpoint toward ways to improve the cultural responsiveness, appropriateness andeffectiveness of clinical services, and in doing so contribute to reducinghealth disparities.Cultural diversity poses challenges to mental health services for many reasons.Culture influences the experience, expression, course and outcome of mentalhealth problems, help-seeking and the response to health promotion, preventionor treatment interventions. The clinical encounter is shaped by differencesbetween patient and clinician in social position and power, which are associatedwith differences in cultural knowledge and identity, language, religion and otheraspects of cultural identity. Specific ethnocultural or racialized groups may sufferhealth disparities and social disadvantage as a result of the meanings and mater-ial consequences of their socially constructed identities. In some instances, cul-tural processes may create or constitute unique social and psychological problemsor predicaments that deserve clinical attention. In culturally diverse societies,the dominant culture, which is expressed through social institutions, includingthe health care system, regulates what sorts of problems are recognized and whatkinds of social or cultural differences are viewed as worthy of attention.A large literature shows the importance of social determinants of healthincluding social status, employment, education, wealth and social support

Rethinking Historical Trauma

Abstract: Recent years have seen the rise of historical trauma as a construct to describe the impact of colonization, cultural suppression, and historical oppression of Indigenous peoples in North America (e.g., Native Americans in the United States, Aboriginal peoples in Canada). The discourses of psychiatry and psychology contribute to the conflation of disparate forms of violence by emphasizing presumptively universal aspects of trauma response. Many proponents of this construct have made explicit analogies to the Holocaust as a way to understand the transgenerational effects of genocide. However, the social, cultural, and psychological contexts of the Holocaust and of post-colonial Indigenous “survivance” differ in many striking ways. Indeed, the comparison suggests that the persistent suffering of Indigenous peoples in the Americas reflects not so much past trauma as ongoing structural violence. The comparative study of genocide and other forms of massive, organized violence can do much to illuminate both common mechanisms and distinctive features, and trace the looping effects from political processes to individual experience and back again. The ethics and pragmatics of individual and collective healing, restitution, resilience, and recovery can be understood in terms of the self-vindicating loops between politics, structural violence, public discourse, and embodied experience.

The intergenerational effects of Indian Residential Schools: Implications for the concept of historical trauma

Abstract: The current paper reviews research that has explored the intergenerational effects of the Indian Residential School (IRS) system in Canada, in which Aboriginal children were forced to live at schools where various forms of neglect and abuse were common. Intergenerational IRS trauma continues to undermine the well-being of today’s Aboriginal population, and having a familial history of IRS attendance has also been linked with more frequent contemporary stressor experiences and relatively greater effects of stressors on well-being. It is also suggested that familial IRS attendance across several generations within a family appears to have cumulative effects. Together, these findings provide empirical support for the concept of historical trauma, which takes the perspective that the consequences of numerous and sustained attacks against a group may accumulate over generations and interact with proximal stressors to undermine collective well-being. As much as historical trauma might be linked to pathology, it is not possible to go back in time to assess how previous traumas endured by Aboriginal peoples might be related to subsequent responses to IRS trauma. Nonetheless, the currently available research demonstrating the intergenerational effects of IRSs provides support for the enduring negative consequences of these experiences and the role of historical trauma in contributing to present day disparities in well-being.

Explanatory Model Interview Catalogue (EMIC): Framework for Comparative Study of Illness

Abstract: The Explanatory Model Interview Catalogue (EMIC) refers to a collection of locally adapted explanatory model interviews rooted in a common framework. Efforts to develop the EMIC were motivated by r...