Culture and Mental Disorders

Although this book is written primarily for health professionals in a broad sense—including physicians of various specialties, nurses, social workers, and other health-related workers—this chapter will focus specifically on care of patients whose problems include psychological or psychiatric issues to a greater or lesser degree. Many patients, whose problems are primarily psychiatric, are taken care of by nonpsychiatric physicians and other healthcare professionals. This can involve patients who initiate their help-seeking with primary care providers, those who develop psychiatric problems in the course of being treated for other conditions, those who do not have easy access to mental health providers, and those whose problems are not so complex that the primary providers feel the need to refer for adequate treatment to be achieved. Therefore, providing culturally appropriate and competent care for such psychiatric patients is a worthwhile and challenging task for physicians and other healthcare workers.