Culturally sensitive practice is vital to a working and effective psychology clinic. It can be really obvious when a psychologist doesn’t have cultural sensitivity just by how they react to clients with a different history to them. CSP is best defined as practice that recognises the differences between clients based on their culture and trying to use that information in therapy to best serve a client.
The Levels of Culturally Sensitive Practice
- Simple awareness that there are differences between people and trying to maintain an understanding of those differences in psychotherapy. At this level a clinician knows that cultural differences exist and will be familiar with general best practices when dealing with clients of various cultures.
- Knowing that culture is constantly changing and that every person’s culture is different and may contrast greatly with what the psychologist expects from first impressions. This second level is where all clinicians should strive to be as it also allows for clinicians to negotiate shared meaning with clients and to decide together what therapy looks like for them.
Why Culturally sensitive practice is vital!
Culturally and linguistically diverse clients often feel misunderstood or uncomfortable with the therapy they receive and they are much more likely to drop out of therapy than clients who belong to the majority population. Likely because Australian psychology is, to a large extent, designed for English speaking white identifying clients and therefore may feel like a poor fit for some people. This is why a psychologist should be adapting common practice to better fit the people and circumstances in which they are practising.
Cultural Differences in Action
Did you know that not all cultures experience all disorders in the same way? For example in Japan social anxiety usually revolves around the idea of offending others and that belief causing anxiety whereas in western contexts social anxiety is usually caused by a feeling of being judged or perceived negatively.
Further, schizophrenia is often seen as as life ruining in English speaking nations and is seen as causing lifelong distress. Whereas in other cultures schizophrenia is seen as less unusual or alarming and even the voices heard tend to be of gods or lost grandparents giving advice and warnings. Which contrasts greatly with the demons and negative experiences that western people with schizophrenia experience. As schizophrenia is more culturally accepted and perhaps even celebrated the actual experience of the disorder changes. To the extent that the same symptoms may not even require a diagnosis as they do not cause someone to be upset or alarmed.
This reflects the importance of culture in mental disorders and it’s why every disorder in the DSM V (basically the psychology rulebook) requires distress to be seen as a disorder, because ultimately all mental health concerns are just differences from what society deems to be normal. Therefore culturally sensitive practice is vital in a multicultural society and it allows clinicians to help all their clients not just the ones they share a background with.
References
Improving cultural competence. (2014). Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration US.