Skip to main content

Supporting Culturally Competent Care and Mental Health

Mina Schoenheit
Mina Schoenheit, M.A., is a cultural consultant who specializes in cross-cultural counseling and therapy and cultural competence. Mina has spent a great deal of her consulting and counseling careers advocating for the needs of communities underserved by the mental health system. For many years, she had been a supporter of NAMIWalks in Portland, a community fund-raiser designed to support the work of the Portland chapter of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI).

Mina is raising funds through this page, in an effort to support NAMI’s education classes, support groups and community outreach programs that serve individuals and families dealing with mental illnesses. The NAMIWalks event in Portland is scheduled for Sunday, May 17, and starts at East Bank esplanade. In the interview below, Mina shares her passion for supporting individuals dealing with mental health issues, as well as their families.   
 
What is NAMIWalks, and why is it important?
NAMI Northwest Walk is on Sunday, May 17 celebrating its 13-year anniversary!  It helps raise awareness and funds to help keep NAMI programs and services free of charge to those who need them. Help us fight discrimination and make a statement that mental health matters. 

NAMI is important because of the many things they do: They educate, advocate, listen and lead.  NAMI Walks and their many efforts successfully combat stigma, encourage understanding how important mental health is.    

What is "culturally-responsive" care and; how is it different from cultural competence?
“Culturally responsive” is the manner in which culturally competent services are delivered.  It requires organizational commitment and leadership, as well as an acknowledgement that it is a continuous process essential to diverse individuals’ specific range of needs. It cannot be viewed as a simple completion of a compliance/accreditation process with a fixed end point.  Culturally responsive mental health care approach turns principles into action.  For example, mental health organizations/programs should be mandated use of cultural content for hospital or clinic accreditation, demonstrate competence in cultural case formulation for professional certification of psychiatrists and other mental health clinicians and require inclusion of cultural content in pre-clinical and clinical components of curriculum for trainees in all health related disciplines to enhance quality of the care and outcome.                 . 

The definition has been widely adapted and modified during the past 10-15 years.  Cultural competence in mental health care is the ability of systems – and professionals within systems – to incorporate a person’s cultural background and beliefs into their case conceptualizations to guide their treatment.

As a practitioner, what are some of the issues you've observed?
It’s exciting to look back and see how far we have come and look forward to working on the challenges ahead.  However, there are potential sources of cultural conflict such as different worldviews of the consumer, provider, setting/system that can have an impact the course and outcome of treatment.  Some of the other issues I have observed are overall need for competency skills interviewing for clinical case formulation from a cultural perspective. Some of the cultural feature I would advocate for when interviewing for cultural assessment is to avoid “What’s wrong with you?  (Disease model) and instead ask “Tell me your story… what happened to you?”  (Narrative model), avoid cultural stereotyping and put emphasis on intra-cultural variability, avoid over-emphasizing culture to the neglect of personal attributes, for example: personality traits, or intolerance of frustration; language facilitation, including language uses, preferences and degree of fluency in first and second languages. 

How would supporting NAMI contribute to the work?
You can support the work by providing access to mental health care for persons with serious mental illness and their families. Supporting NAMI contributes to the advocacy and public policy issues NAMI is providing a strong voice for that affect adults and children living with mental illness and their loved ones.  
 
Interview by Maileen Hamto 

Popular posts from this blog

Medicine Wheel for the Planet

Jennifer Grenz, PhD       Working toward ecological healing requires awareness of how Indigenous ancestral knowledge and living ways can complement Western scientific approaches to environmental restoration and protection practices. Dr. Jennifer Grenz (Nlaxa’pamux mixed ancestry) worked for more than two decades as a field researcher and practitioner for environmental nonprofit organizations, where she worked with different levels of government, including First Nations in Canada. "Medicine Wheel for the Planet" compiles Grenz’s most potent realizations about the lack of forward movement in addressing an impending ecological catastrophe.  A warming climate impacts not only human lives but also the natural balance that relies on reciprocal relationships rooted in deep connections to the land. She uses the metaphor of the four directions of the Indigenous “medicine wheel” to invite openness to Indigenous teachings, letting go of colonial narratives, merging lessons f...
Read more

Memento - Embracing the Darkness

Dennis "Dizzy" Doan Stories about overcoming and persevering through family dysfunction, poverty, and mental health challenges offer hope and the promise of better days. Dennis “Dizzy” Doan’s memoir Memento: Embracing the Darkness is one such story, with the added complexity of being raised in an immigrant Vietnamese family. Doan’s parents dealt with the mental and emotional aftermath of war, which forcibly uprooted them from their homeland. In the United States, they struggled to create a safe and stable life for their two sons. Doan shares his journey of finding himself, his craft, and eventually a successful tattoo business in Southern California despite personal strife and run-ins with the law. Doan is best known for developing the aesthetic language to combat anti-Asian hate that erupted during the COVID-19 pandemic. His art series titled “Model Minority” went viral, sparking conversation about Asian American identities and harmful stereotypes. In Memento, Doan showcase...
Read more

Enlighten Me

Editor's Note: This review was originally published in Los Angeles Book Review . Author Minh Lê Standing up for oneself seems like doing the right thing. Binh did just that in the face of a racist school bully who was poking fun at his Asian heritage. But physically assaulting another student goes against school policy, and it was Binh who got in trouble. Binh shares a silent retreat with his family and younger siblings. Along with other children, he learns about stories from the previous lives of the Buddha. The stories are interesting, but for Binh, it is difficult to sit still and clear his mind when he misses his Gameboy. While he struggles with silence, he learns important lessons about friendship, community, and being present. In the graphic novel "Enlighten Me," award-winning author Minh Lê and bestselling illustrator Chan Chau tell the story of a boy who gains a better understanding of himself as he works on quieting the mind and reflecting on dharma. Lê and Ch...
Read more