Concise Guide to Cross-cultural Psychiatry

As society becomes more diverse and the world evolves into a global village, the need to integrate culture into medicine and psychiatry has become increasingly criticalAchallenging clinicians to provide the most effective psychiatric care to patients of different racial and ethnic backgrounds. Breaking new ground by proposing the use of a new instrument for assessing nonadherence to psychotropic medication regimens in clinical practice, the author begins with an overview of culture in psychiatry, which adopts Ward GoodenoughAs definition of culture as a clinically useful concept. Subsequent chapters cover -The culture influences of psychiatric care of Native Americans, which uses a fascinating case study to propose that ethnicityAas distinct from cultureAbe used as a central organizing principle to integrate cultural factors in psychiatric care. -Culture in DSM-IV, which summarizes the specific cultural contribution in each section of the diagnostic categories of DSM-IV and discusses the significance of the cultural statement for the introduction to the manual and the cultural annotations for the multiaxial schema.
-Culture-bound syndromes (CBSs), which clarifies the hot issues on how to define and classify CBSs, suggests a decision tree to help clinicians differentiate CBSs from other DSM-IV categories of mental illnesses, and proposes a tentative classification of CBSs that can be integrated into DSM-IV. -Cultural formulation (CF), which ventures beyond the application of CF as proposed by the cultural task groups of DSM-IV by using a clinical case study to highlight the technique of elucidating cultural information during a routine psychiatric interview. -Cross-cultural psychopharmacology, which reviews the contribution of pharmacokinetic, pharmacogenetic, and pharmacodynamic factors to the variations of psychotropic drug responses in different populations, and the cultural context of nonadherence to psychotropic medication regimens, which proposes using a new instrument called the ClinicianAs Inquiry Into the Meaning of Taking Psychotropic Medications (developed by the author and John A. Nichols, Psy.D.), for assessing nonadherence in clinical practice.
-The cultural context of psychotherapy, which explores various psychotherapeutic issues when a therapist from one culture is called upon to treat a patient from another culture. Designed to fit into a lab-coat or jacket pocket, these convenient guides complement the more detailed information found in lengthier psychiatric texts. Packed with practical information and enhanced by illustrations, references, and a glossary, this Concise Guide will appeal to psychiatrists, psychiatric residents, and medical students working in treatment settings such as inpatient psychiatry units, outpatient clinics, consultationAliaison services, and private offices.