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Working with Interpreters in Mental Health

Good Practice Guidelines

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Mental Health, Mental Illness and Migration

Part of the book series: Mental Health and Illness Worldwide ((MHIW))

Abstract

Clinicians will need to develop skills in working with service users who are not fluent in the language of the country to which they have migrated. These good practice guidelines give an overview of the issues that clinicians need to consider when working with interpreters to ensure that they are as skilled, effective, and helpful as possible when working in partnership with interpreters when the need arises. This will also ensure that people who have migrated and do not speak the language of the new country fluently, can access mental health services. Clinicians will also find that they benefit from learning an additional skill and it may lead them to reflect upon their ways of working, use of language, and cultural assumptions in all areas of their work within mental health. 272 million people were officially recorded as having migrated to another country in 2019, the actual number is likely to be higher as people not officially registered are not included in these figures. Some migrants are not fluent in the language of the country to which they have migrated but may still need to access mental health services.

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Acknowledgments

The good practice guidelines presented here are based on those the authors wrote for the British Psychological Society (BPS) on Working with Interpreters. The authors would like to acknowledge and thank the BPS for giving permission to use elements of these within this chapter.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Psychology, University of East London, London, UK

    Rachel Tribe

  2. Clinical Lead, Rakuba, London, UK

    Kate Thompson

Authors
  1. Rachel Tribe
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  2. Kate Thompson
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Psychiatry King's College London, London, UK

    Dinesh Bhugra

  2. Department of Psychiatry, Ibn Rushd University Psychiatric Centre, Casablanca, Morocco

    Driss Moussaoui

  3. ASL Provinciale di Foggia, Foggia, Napoli, Italy

    Antonio Ventriglio

  4. School of Psychology, University of East London, London, UK

    Rachel Tribe

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Tribe, R., Thompson, K. (2021). Working with Interpreters in Mental Health. In: Bhugra, D., Moussaoui, D., Ventriglio, A., Tribe, R. (eds) Mental Health, Mental Illness and Migration. Mental Health and Illness Worldwide. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0750-7_38-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0750-7_38-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore

  • Print ISBN: 978-981-10-0750-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-10-0750-7

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