Transcultural psychiatry: Practice and sample cases in USA and status in Turkiye

Culture refers to unique behavior patterns and lifestyle shared by a group of people that distinguish it from other groups. The views, beliefs, values, and attitudes of a group characterize their culture. Culture and people inşuence and interact with each other reciprocally (1). In clinical practice patient's culture, physician's culture, and medical culture play a significant role. Adequate and appropriate understanding of cultural dimension is essential for culturally competent practice (1). Also the impact of culture in evaluation and treatment of children and adolescents is significant in psychiatric patients (2).

Cultural competency is a requirement for medical licensure in most states the US. To prove clinical competency clinicians are required demonstrate cultural competency. Clinicians typically work in multicultural and multiethnic societies (1). Ongoing globalization and interconnection of economies and rapidly spreading new social media platforms will increase diversity in all communities, but especially in developing countries including Turkiye. Therefore cultural competency training should be incorporated into residency training and continuous medical education systems especially for mental health clinicians.

Clinicians should be familiar with culturally relevant relations and interactions of their patients (1), in order to establish therapeutic alliance and provide competent care and therapy besides demonstrating cultural sensitivity, knowledge, and empathy. Also most psychotherapies are based on Euro-American values of individualistic and egocentric concept, which can be contrasted with more sociocentric, ecocentric, and cosmocentric views (3). This issue should be taken into consideration when treating patients from other cultures or subcultures in the US and Europe.

In this presentation I will review transcultural psychiatry practice in the US, provide and discuss some cases and summarize the status in Turkiye.

References:
1. Focus, winter 2006 Vol. IV. No. 1, 81-89. Introduction: Culture and Psychiatry. Tseng W-S, Streltzer J.
2. Child Adolesc Psychiatr Clin N Am. 2010 Oct;19(4):661-80. Culture and development in children and youth. Pumariega AJ, Joshi SV.
3. Transcult Psychiatry. 2007 Jun;44(2):232-57. Psychotherapy and the cultural concept of the person. Kirmayer LJ