The Western Psychiatrist and his Non-Western Clientele: Transcultural Experiences of Relevance to Psychotherapy with Canadian Indian Patients * .

Abstract

Whenever a Western-trained psychiatrist is faced with the challenge of treating patients from a non-Western society, his responsibility is greater than when treating Western patients. He must acquire sufficient knowledge of that culture in order to distinguish between genuine psychiatric illness and culturally determined pathomorphic, that is illness-like, but not pathologic, states. He must also be able to gauge the degree of acculturation in his patient and to judge whether a therapist or indigenous healer of that very culture would not be of more benefit to this patient than Western psychiatry.