Culture influences healthcare at all levels, including communications and interactions with doctors and nurses, health disparities, health care outcomes, and even the illness experience itself. People in some cultures believe illness is the will of a higher power, and may be more reluctant to receive health care.
How does culture affect the care of patients?
Culture has a significant impact on both diagnoses and treatment options, primarily because of different social beliefs, but also because of biological factors. In order to improve the care of patients in general, health care providers should be aware of the following cultural influences. 1. Family and Community
Do cultural beliefs about mental illness affect treatment preferences?
Different cultural beliefs about mental illness may influence the type of treatment that is sought and how mental illness is addressed and managed. The purpose of this study is to identify cultural beliefs about the causes of mental illness and treatment preferences, among four different racial/ethnic groups.
What are the cultural influences on drug treatment?
Perhaps one of the most important cultural influences has to do with the way a patient responds physically to medication. Some people from backgrounds other than Caucasian may not metabolize the medication correctly, causing serious complications in treatment.
What are the beliefs of Culture in health?
All cultures have developed systems of beliefs to explain the cause of illness, how illness can be cured or treated, and who should be involved in the health care process. In other words, every culture has beliefs about health, disease, treatment, and health care providers.
How does culture influence patient roles and expectations?
In addition, culture specific values influence patient roles and expectations, how much information about illness and treatment is desired, how death and dying will be managed, bereavement patterns, gender and family roles, and processes for decision making. Cross-cultural variations also exist within cultures.
How do cultural differences affect patients?
Cultural differences affect patients‘ attitudes about medical care and their ability to understand, manage, and cope with the course of an illness, the meaning of a diagnosis, and the consequences of medical treatment. Patients and their families bring culture specific ideas and values related to concepts of health and illness, ...
Why do cultures have systems of health beliefs?
All cultures have systems of health beliefs to explain what causes illness, how it can be cured or treated, and who should be involved in the process. The extent to which patients perceive patient education as having cultural relevance for them can have a profound effect on their reception to information provided and their willingness to use it.
Why are some cultures reluctant to accept a diagnosis of severe emotional illness or mental retardation?
Some sub-populations of cultures, such as those from India and Pakistan, are reluctant to accept a diagnosis of severe emotional illness or mental retardation because it severely reduces the chances of other members of the family getting married. In Vietnamese culture, mystical beliefs explain physical and mental illness.
What do Native Americans believe?
Native Americans also place great value on family and spiritual beliefs. They believe that a state of health exists when a person lives in total harmony with nature. Illness is viewed not as an alteration in a person’s physiological state, but as an imbalance between the ill person and natural or supernatural forces.
Why is harmony important in Asian culture?
Among Asian cultures, maintaining harmony is an important value; therefore, there is a strong emphasis on avoiding conflict and direct confrontation. Due to respect for authority, disagreement with the recommendations of health care professionals is avoided.
Do Vietnamese accept Western mental health?
Vietnamese don’t readily accept Western mental health counseling and interventions, particularly when self-disclosure is expected. However, it is possible to accept assistance if trust has been gained. Russian immigrants frequently view U.S. medical care with a degree of mistrust.
How does culture affect health?
Arthur Kleinman, professor of medical anthropology and psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, in the New York Times article, “Bridging the Culture Gap.” “It affects health disparities, communication and interactions in the doctor-patient relationship, the illness experience, and health care outcomes.”
How to achieve cultural competency in medicine?
Awareness is the first step to achieving cultural competency in your practice. Doctors need to realize that they also bring their own cultural context to patient relationships, even if they don’t realize it. For example, in modern medicine, sometimes the focus can be more on the disease than the person with the illness.
How does culture affect people?
For instance, culture affects the way in which people describe their symptoms, such as whether they choose to describe emotional or physical symptoms. Essentially, it dictates whether people selectively present symptoms in a “culturally appropriate” way that won’t reflect badly on them.
How do cultures differ in mental health?
Furthermore, cultures differ in the meaning and level of significance and concern they give to mental illness. Every culture has its own way of making sense of the highly subjective experience that is an understanding of one’s mental health. Each has its opinion on whether mental illness is real or imagined, an illness of the mind or ...
What are the factors that affect mental health?
However, mental illnesses and mental health in general are affected by the combination of biological and genetic factors, psychology, and society. This intersectionality is important, but the heavy influence of societal factors often goes ignored.
How does culture affect health care?
The Influence of Culture on Health Care Decisions. Culture plays a huge role in medical interactions. It influences how an individual might view an illness or treatment, for example, and affects how a physician should address an older patient. Culture may also affect the decision-making process. Cultural beliefs can affect how a patient will seek ...
Why do cultures have beliefs?
All cultures have developed systems of beliefs to explain the cause of illness, how illness can be cured or treated, and who should be involved in the health care process. In other words, every culture has beliefs about health, disease, treatment, and health care providers.
What is cultural compliance?
Cultural issues play a key role in compliance, which is a person’s willingness to adhere to the doctor’s recommendations. Culture influences healthcare at all levels, including communications and interactions with doctors and nurses, health disparities, health care outcomes, and even the illness experience itself.
What is the belief that mental illness is borne out of a disruption in the family?
The belief that mental illness is borne out of a disruption in the family is a theme that cuts across racial/ethnic lines for the three racial/ethnic minority groups in this study. For the Asian-Americans and the Latinos, however, the narrative of family disruption or loss of family may have its roots in migration.
Do Latinos seek treatment?
Latinos who are seeking treatment may be more willing to use other forms of treatment. Furthermore, the study participants consist of older primary care patients who have consented to be in a research study in which they are randomized to integrated mental health treatment or referral to specialty mental health care.
How does cultural diversity affect mental health?
Cultural diversity across the world has significant impacts on the many aspects of mental health, ranging from the ways in which health and illness are perceived, health seeking behavior, attitudes of the consumer as well as the practitioners and mental health systems.
What are the differences in cultures?
The differences in cultures have a range of implications for mental health practice, ranging from the ways that people view health and illness, to treatment seeking patterns, the nature of the therapeutic relationship and issues of racism and discrimination.
What does "society as a patient" mean?
Society as a patientis a term that Marsella (45) uses to point out that not all problems are located within the individual, and that the patient's well-being or lack thereof is often a product of the impacts of the external environment.
What is coping style?
Coping styles refer to the ways in which people cope with both everyday as well and more extreme stressors in their lives, including mental health related stressors.
What is stigma in treatment seeking?
Stigmacan play a key role in terms of variations in treatment-seeking. Stigma can be viewed as a “mark of shame, disgrace or disapproval which results in an individual being rejected, discriminated against, and excluded from participating in a number of different areas of society” [(29), p. 16].
What is culture in the context of a tribe?
Culture is a broad and vexed term that can be defined in a range of ways, depending on the field of study and the perspective of the person using the term. As Tribe (1) argues, it is a multi-layered concept influenced by a range of issues such as gender, class, religion, language, and nationality, just to name a few.
Is it legal to reproduce a journal article in another forum?
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