This article addresses the various perceptions people from other cultures have regarding mental health and mental illness and the unique coping mechanisms they use based on their cultural beliefs and values. The various barriers to receiving mental health services and the reasons for such barriers are also discussed. In addition, the article stresses the importance of using and implementing culturally appropriate and sensitive assessments and therapeutic interventions.
Adebowale, T.O., & Ogunlesi, A.O. (1999). Beliefs and knowledge about etiology of mental illness among Nigerian psychiatric patients and their relatives . African Journal of Medicine and Science, 28(1-2), 35-41.
2.
Acosta, F.X., & Evans, L.A. ( 1982). Effective psychotherapy for low-income and minority patients . In F. X. Acosta, J. Yamamoto, & L. A. Evans (Eds.), Effective psychotherapy for low income and minority patients (pp. 51-81). New York, NY: Plenum.
3.
Ai, A.L., Peterson, C., & Huang, B. ( 2003). The effect of religious-spiritual coping on positive attitudes of adult Muslim refugees from Kosovo and Bosnia. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 13(1), 29-47.
4.
Al-Krenawi, A., & Graham, J.R. ( 2000). Culturally sensitive social work practice with Arab clients in mental health settings. Health and Social Work, 25(1), 9-22.
5.
Al-Subaie, A. ( 1989). Psychiatry in Saudi Arabia: Cultural perspectives. Transcultural Psychiatry Research Review, 26, 245-262.
6.
Araneta, E.G., Jr. ( 1993). Psychiatric care of Filipino Americans. In A. C. Gaw (Ed.), Culture, ethnicity, and mental illness (pp. 377-412). Washington, DC: American Psychiatry Press.
7.
Asuni, T., Schoenberg, F., & Swift, C. ( 1994). Mental health and disease in Africa. Ibadan, Nigeria: Spectrum Books.
Austin, N.L., Carter, R.T., & Vaux, A. ( 1990). The role of racial identity in Black students’ attitudes towards counseling and counseling centers. Journal of College Student development, 31, 237-244.
10.
Bacote, J.C. ( 1994). Transcultural psychiatric nursing: Diagnostic and treatment issues. Journal of Psychosocial Nursing, 32, 42-46.
11.
Baptiste, D., Jr. ( 1990). The treatment of adolescents and their families in cultural transition: Issues and recommendations. Contemporary Family Therapy, 12(1), 3-22.
12.
Barker-Cummings, C., McClellan, W., Soucie, J.M., & Krisher, J. ( 1995). Ethnic differences in the use of peritoneal dialysis as initial treatment for end-stage renal disease. Journal of the American Medical Association, 274, 1858.
13.
Barrio, C., & Yamada, A. ( 2010). Culturally based intervention development: The case of Latino families dealing with schizophrenia. Research on Social Work Practice, 20, 483-492.
14.
Berkanovic, E. ( 1980). The effect of inadequate language translation of Hispanic’s responses to health surveys. American Journal of Public Health , 70, 1273-1276.
15.
Boyd, N. ( 1982). Family therapy with Black families. In E. E. Jones & S. J. Korchin (Eds.), Minority mental health (pp. 227-249). New York, NY: Praeger.
16.
Carillo, J.E., Trevino, F.M., Betancourt, J.R., & Coustasse, A. ( 2001). Latino access to health care: The role of insurance, managed care, and institutional barriers. In M. Aguirre-Molina, C. Molina, & R. E. Zambrana (Eds.), Health issues in the Latino community (pp. 55-74). San Francisco: CA: Jossey-Bass.
17.
Chaces, E., & Christ, G. ( 1996). Cross-cultural issues in patient education. Patient Education Counseling, 27, 13-21.
18.
Chang, H., & Tobiassen, D. ( 2000, December). Nurturing healthy children in a diverse society: The implications of racial, cultural, and linguistic diversity for Proposition 10 (N. Halfon, E. Shulman, M. Shannon, & M. Hochstein, Eds.). Building community systems for young children, UCLA Center for Healthier Children, Families, and Communities, Los Angeles, CA. Retrieved from http://www.healthychild.ucla.edu/Publications/Documents/Nurturing00.pdf
19.
Cochrane, R., & Bal, S. ( 1987). Migration and schizophrenia: An examination of five hypothesis . Social Psychiatry, 22, 181-191.
20.
Cruz, M., Pincus, H.A., Welsh, D.E., Greenwald, D., Lasky, E., & Kilbourne, A.M. (2010). The relationship between religious involvement and clinical status of patients with bipolar disorder . Bipolar Disorders, 12, 68-76.
21.
Douglas, K.C., & Fujimoto, D. ( 1995). Asian Pacific elders: Implications for health care providers . Clinical Geriatric Medicine, 11, 69-82.
22.
Dow, H.D., & Woolley, S.R. ( 2010). Mental health perceptions and coping strategies of Albanian immigrants and their families. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, no. DOI: 10.1111/j.1752-0606.2010.00199.x
23.
Fairbank, J.K., Reischauer, E.O., & Craig, A.M. ( 1973). East Asia: Tradition and transformation. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.
24.
Friedrich, M.J. ( 1999). Addressing mental health needs of Balkan refugees. Journal of the American Medical Association, 282, 422-423.
25.
Garcia, M., & Rodriguez, P.F. (1989). Psychological effects of political repression in Argentina and El Salvador. In D. Koslow & E. Salett (Eds.), Stress, coping, and development in children (pp. 43-84). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
26.
Gaw, A.C. ( 1993). Psychiatric care of Chinese Americans. In A. C. Gaw (Ed.), Culture, ethnicity, and mental illness (pp. 245-280). Washington, DC: American Psychiatry Press.
27.
Gold, S.J. ( 1992). Mental health and illness in Vietnamese refugees: Cross-cultural medicine a decade later. Western Journal of Medicine, 92, 290-294.
28.
Gupta, S. ( 1993). Can environmental factors explain the epidemiology of schizophrenia in immigrant groups? Social Psychiatry, 28, 263-266.
29.
Hatch, M.L., Friedman, S., & Paradis, C.M. ( 1996). Behavioral treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder in African Americans. Cognitive & Behavioral Practice , 3, 303-315.
Ho, E., Au, S., Bedford, C., et al. (2002). Mental issues for Asians in New Zealand: A literature review. Wellington: Mental Health Commission.
32.
Hsu, L., & Alden, L.E. ( 2008). Cultural influences on willingness to seek treatment for social anxiety in Chinese- and European-heritage students. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 14, 215-223.
33.
Hui, C.H., & Triandis, H.C. (1986). Inidividualism and collectivism: A study of cross-cultural researchers. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 17, 225-248.
34.
Jackson, L.E. ( 1993). Understanding, eliciting, and negotiating client’s multicultural health beliefs. Nursing Practice, 18, 30-43.
35.
Johnson, R.L., Saha, S., & Arbeliez, J.J. (2004). Racial and ethnic differences in patient perceptions of bias and cultural competence in health care. Journal of general Internal Medicine, 19(2), 111-121.
36.
Kabir, M., Iliyasu, Z., Abubakar, I.S., & Aliyu, M.H. ( 2004). Perceptions and beliefs about mental illness among adults in Karfi village, Northern Nigeria. Retrieved from http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-698x/4/3
37.
Kawanishi, Y. ( 1995). The effects of culture on beliefs about stress and coping: Casual attribution of Anglo-American and Japanese persons. Journal of Contemporary Psychology, 25(1), 49-60.
38.
Kim, L.I.C. ( 1993). Psychiatric care of Korean Americans. In A. C. Gaw (Ed.), Culture, ethnicity, mental illness (pp. 347-376). Washington, DC: American Psychiatry Press.
39.
Kinzie, J.D. ( 1985). Overview of clinical issues in the treatment of Southeast Asian refugees. In T. C. Owan (Ed.), Southeast Asian mental health: Treatment, prevention, services, training, and research (pp. 113-136). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
40.
Kline, F., Acosta, F., Austin, W., & Johnson, R. ( 1980). The misunderstood Spanish speaking patient. American Journal of Psychiatry, 137, 1530-1533.
41.
Kopinak, J., Berisha, B., & Mursali, B. ( 2001). An investigation into the health of a representative sample of adults in Kosovo. Journal of Humanitarian Assistance . Retrieved from www.jha.ac/articles/a080.pdf
42.
Ku, L., & Freilich, A. ( 2001). Caring for immigrants: Health care safety nets in Los Angeles, New York, Miami, and Houston. Washington, DC: Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured.
43.
Kumasaka, Y., & Saito, H. ( 1970). Kachigumi: A collective delusion among Japanese and their descendants in Brazil. Canadian Psychiatric Association Journal , 15, 167-175.
44.
Lam, A.P., & Kavanagh, D.J. (1996). Help seeking by immigrant Indochinese psychiatric patients in Sydney, Australia. Psychiatric Services, 47, 993-995.
45.
Landrine, H., & Klonoff, E.A. ( 1994). Cultural diversity in casual attributions for illness: The role of the supernatural. Journal of Behavioral Medicine , 17, 181-193.
46.
Lefley, H.P. ( 1990). Culture and chronic mental illness. Hospital and Community Psychiatry, 41, 277-286.
47.
Levav, I., Kohn, R., Flaherty, J.A., & Aisenberg, F. ( 1990). Mental health attitudes and practices of Soviet immigrants . Israel Journal of Psychiatry and Related Studies, 27, 131-144.
48.
Li, P.L., Logan, S., Yee, L., & Ng, S. ( 1999). Barriers to meeting the mental health needs of the Chinese community. Journal of Public Health and Medicine, 21(1), 74-80.
49.
Leong, F.T. ( 1986). Counseling and psychotherapy with Asian-Americans: Review of the literature. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 33, 196-206.
50.
Lin, T., Y., Tardiff, K., Donetz, G., & Goresky, W. ( 1978). Ethnicity and patterns of help-seeking. Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry, 2, 3-13.
51.
Littlewood, R., & Lipsedge, M. ( 1997). Aliens and Alienists (3rd ed.). London, UK: Routledge.
52.
Loukissa, A.D. ( 1995). Family burden in chronic mental illness: A review of research studies. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 21, 248-255.
53.
Marcos, L., Alpert, M., Urcuyo, L., & Kesselmann, M. (1973). The effect of interview language on the evaluation of psychopathology in Spanish-American schizophrenic patients. American Journal of Psychiatry, 130, 549-553.
54.
McMiller, W., & Weisz, J. ( 1996). Help-seeking preceding mental health clinical intake among African-American, Latino, and Caucasian Youths. Journal of American Academy of Child Adolescents Psychiatry, 35, 1059-1063.
55.
Meadows, A. ( 1999). Integrating pharmacy technicians in the health care team . American Journal of Health Systems, 56, 1602-1604.
56.
Neblett, E.W., Jr., Terzian, M., & Harriott, V. ( 2010). From racial discrimination to substance use: The buffering effects of racial socialization. Child Development Perspectives , 4, 131-137.
57.
New Freedom Commission on Mental Health. ( 2003). Achieving the promise: Transforming mental health care in America. Rockville, MD: Department of Health and Human Services.
58.
Nguyen, D. ( 1985). Culture shock-a review of Vietnamese culture and its concepts of health and disease. Western Journal of Medicine , 142(3), 409-412.
59.
Nguyen, D.T. ( 1997). Vietnamese attitudes toward mental illness and the utilization of mental health services. Ann Arbor, MI: Bell & Howell.
60.
Okasha, A., & Lotailf, F. ( 1979). Attempted suicide: An Egyptian investigation. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 60(1), 69-75.
61.
Pfeifer, S. ( 1994). Beliefs in demons and exorcism in psychiatric patients in Switzerland. British Journal of Medical Psychology, 67, 247-258.
62.
Ragurman, R., Weiss, M.G., Channabasavanna, S.M., & Devins, G.M. ( 1996). Stigma, depression, and somatization in South India. American Journal of Psychiatry, 153, 1043-1049.
63.
Ruiz, P. ( 1993). Access to health care for uninsured Hispanics: Policy recommendations. Hospital and Community Psychiatry, 44(10), 958-962.
64.
Scheffler, R.M., & Miller, A.B. ( 1991). Differences in mental health service utilization among ethnic subpopulations. International Journal of Law and Psychiatry , 14, 363-376.
65.
Selekman, J. ( 1998). Jewish American. In L. D. Purnell & B. J. Paulanka (Eds.), Transcultural health care (pp. 371-393). Philadelphia, PA: F. A. Davis.
66.
Smith, E.J. ( 1981). Cultural and historical perspectives in counseling Blacks . In D. W. Sue & D. Sue (Eds.), Counseling the culturally different: Theory and practice (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Wiley.
67.
Snowden, L.R., Masland, M., Ma, Y.F., & Ciemens, E. ( 2006). Strategies to improve minority access to public mental health services in California: Description and preliminary evaluation. Journal of Community Psychology, 34, 225-235.
68.
Steward, R.J., Jackson, M.R., & Jackson, J.D. ( 1990). Alienation and interactional styles in a predominantly White environment: A study of successful Black students. Journal of College Student Development, 31, 509-515.
69.
Sue, S., & Sue, D.W. ( 1974). MMPI comparisons between Asian-American and non-Asian students utilizing a student health psychiatric clinic. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 21, 423-427.
70.
Sue, S. ( 1994). Mental health. In N. Zane, D. T. Takeuchi, & K. Young (Eds.), Conforming critical health issues of Asian and Pacific Islander Americans (pp. 266-288). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
71.
Sue, D.W., & Sue, D. ( 1990). Counseling the culturally different: Theory and practice (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Wiley.
72.
Sussman, L.K., Robins, L.N., & Earls, F. ( 1987). Treatment-seeking for depression by Black and White Americans . Social Science and Medicine, 24, 187-196.
73.
Szmukler, I.G., Burgess, P., Herman, H., Benson, A., Colusa, S., & Bloch, S. ( 1996). Caring for relatives with serious mental illness: The development of the experience of care giving inventory. Social Psychiatric Epidemiology, 31, 137-148.
74.
Takeuchi, D.T., Leaf, P.J., & Kuo, H.S. ( 1988). Ethnic differences in the perception of barriers to help seeking. Social psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 23, 273-280.
75.
Takeuchi, D. & Uehara, E. ( 1996). Mental health services to ethnic minority communities: Current research and future directions. In B. L. Levin & J. Petrilla (Eds.), Mental Health Services: A Public Health Perspective (pp. 63-80). London : Oxford University Press.
76.
Tedeschi, G.J., & Willis, F.N. ( 1993). Attitudes toward counseling among Asian international and native Caucasian students. Journal of College Student Psychotherapy, 7, 43-54.
77.
Uba, L. ( 1992). Cultural barriers to health care for Southeast Asian refugees. Public Health Reports, 107, 544-548.
78.
Vicary, D., Searle, G., & Andrews, H. ( 2000). Assessment and intervention with Kosovar refugees: Design and management of a therapeutic team. Retrieved from http://www.massey.ac.nz/~trauma/issues/2000-2/vicary.htm
79.
White, S.R. ( 1991). Family experience with mental health problems in Tanzania . Acta Psychiatric of Scandinavia, 83, 77-111.
80.
Wills, T.A., & DePaulo, E.M. ( 1991). Interpersonal analysis of the help-seeking process. In C. R. Snyder & D. R. Forsyth (Eds.), Handbook of social and clinical psychology (pp. 350-375). New York, NY: Pergamon.
81.
Wintersteen, R.T., Wintersteen, L.B., Mupedziswa, R., & Cheah, A. ( 1997). Families and mental illness: Observations from two developing countries. International Social Work, 40, 191-207.
82.
Woodward, A.M., Dwinell, A.D., & Arons, B.S. ( 1992). Barriers to mental health care for Hispanic Americans: A literature review and discussion. Journal of Mental Health Administration, 19, 224-236.
83.
Ying, Y.W. ( 1990). Explanatory models of major depression and implications for help-seeking among immigrant Chinese-American women. Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry, 14, 393-408.
84.
Young, A. ( 2000). Women who become men: Albanian sworn virgins. Oxford, UK: Berg.
85.
Youssef, J., & Deane, F.P. ( 2006). Factors influencing mental health help seeking in Arabic communities in Sydney, Australia. Mental Health, Culture, and Religion, 9, 43-66.
