Main description:

Based on a recently completed project of cultural consultation in Montreal, Cultural Consultation presents a model of multicultural and applicable health care. This model used clinicians and consultants to provide in-depth assessment, treatment planning, and limited interventions in consultation with frontline primary care and mental health practitioners working with immigrants, refugees, and members of indigenous and ethnocultural communities. Evaluation of the service has demonstrated that focused interventions by consultants familiar with patients' cultural backgrounds could improve the relationship between the patient and the primary clinician.

This volume presents models for intercultural work in psychiatry and psychology in primary care, general hospital and specialty mental health settings. The editors highlight crucial topics such as:

- Discussing the social context of intercultural mental health care, conceptual models of the role of culture in psychopathology and healing, and the development of a cultural consultation service and a specialized cultural psychiatric service

- Examining the process of intercultural work more closely with particular emphasis oto strategies of consultation, the identity of the clinician, the ways in which gender and culture position the clinician, and interaction of the consultant with family systems and larger institutions

- Highlighting special situations that may place specific demands on the clinician: working with refugees and survivors of torture or political violence, with separated families, and with patients with psychotic episodes

This book is of valuable use to mental health practitioners who are working in multidisciplinary settings who seek to understand cultural difference in complex cases. Psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, nurse practitioners, primary care providers and trainees in these disciplines will make thorough use of the material covered in this text.

Contents:

Introduction: The Place of Culture in Mental Health Services.- Development and Evaluation of the Cultural Consultation Service.- The Process of Cultural Consultation.- Cultural Consultation in Child Psychiatry.- Working with Interpreters.- Culture Brokers, Clinically Applied Ethnography and Cultural Mediation.- Family Systems in Cultural Consultation.- Gender, Power & Ethnicity in Cultural Consultation.- Community Consultation and Mediation with Racialized and Marginalized Minorities.- Addressing Cultural Diversity Through Collaborative Care.- Consultation to Remote and Indigenous Communities.- Cultural Consultation for Refugees.- Consultation to Youth Protection and Legal Settings.- Cultural Consultation in General Hospital Psychiatry.- Cultural Consultations in Medical Settings.- Conclusion: The Future of Cultural Consultation.