Cultural Consideration in Mental Health

Submit an evidence-based practice paper about cultural competency in mental health nursing. An evidence-based practice paper allows you to explore best practice and help improve client outcomes on a psychiatric unit. Your paper should describe how you, as a nurse, will include – or have included – cultural awareness in a client diagnosed with a mental illness. The person you describe could be someone in your clinical setting, someone you have worked with in the past, or a theoretical client.Cultural Consideration in Mental Health

Remember that culture can also include gender equality, sexual orientation, and other cultures besides race and religion – including cultures unique to one particular family. Your paper should be at least 3 pages (double-spaced, not including the title or reference pages) in APA Format and include:

Assessment: Discuss what you would assess in regard to a client\’s culture. For example, are there specific dietary requirements? Are schedule changes necessary to avoid conflicts with religious practices? Who is the spokesperson for the family? What would you assess?

Diagnosis: List any mental health nursing diagnoses this person has or may be at risk for. Include at least one cultural diagnosis.

Planning: What planning needs to be done to ensure the cultural and emotional safety of the client?

Implementation: What are interventions that would ensure the safety of your client in regard to culture? Include at least two interventions. For example, if your client has religious beliefs that affect the ability to take medications, what interventions would you create to ensure the client\’s safety? What can you do to make sure the client\’s cultural needs are met?

Evaluation: How will you evaluate whether your implementation was effective? Make sure the parameters are objective and measurable.

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In your summary, discuss whether any completed interventions were successful. What could be done differently in the future? If the interventions have not yet been carried out, you might discuss some institutional changes that could be made to ensure cultural safety for all clients in that setting.

Cultural Consideration in Mental Health

Assessment

Cultural competency is one of the fundamental requirement for Registered Nurses (RNs) and other mental health practitioners operating in today’s culturally-diverse health care settings. Mollah et al (2018) stated that relevant cultural competency training may prove instrumental in enhancing the quality of care, access and delivery of mental health care services for racially and culturally diverse populations. Some of the key aspects assessed in regard to a client’s culture include: gender, race or ethnicity, language, religion, codes of manners, dressing mode, beliefs, food and dietary requirements, behavioral patterns or standards, socio-economic status, sexual orientation, disability, education and age (Salami et al 2018). In terms of dietary requirements, empirical studies by nutritional epidemiologists indicated that a conventional dietary pattern including large amounts of fruit, vegetables, whole grains, fish and meat reduced the risk of mental health problems including bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, panic disorder and others (Khosravi et al 2020). In order to deliver patient-centered care, the function of religion and spirituality in the lives of psychiatric patients must be recognized and supported. Schedule changes are necessary to avoid conflict with religious practices through the integration of religious and spiritual concerns into psychosocial rehabilitation interventions.  In terms of the spokesperson for the family, family members and friends can become an invaluable resource through diagnosis, management and treatment of the mental health disorder (Salami et al 2018). Regarding what I would assess, strong focus is placed on a number of key cultural factors namely: language, behavioral standards or patterns, religion, dietary requirements, disability, gender and disability.Cultural Consideration in Mental Health

Diagnosis

Abdulla is a male patient who arrived in the United States as an illegal immigrant about 2 years. He is 28 years old and of Iranian origin. He is without any traceable social contacts, lacks meaningful employment and currently homeless. The client appears to suffer from prolonged and frequent manic episodes, feels persecuted and exhibit persistent auditory hallucinations. In view of cultural diagnosis, the client does not speak the official language (English) of the host country, exhibit high mistrust and fear of treatment (Mollah et al 2018).

Planning

Comprehensive planning must be made to offer culturally and linguistically-appropriate services in order to address impending communication concerns and language barriers that could significantly undermine the quantity and quality of the nurse-patient interactions. Clear and well-measured communication is integral to offering culturally-competent mental health care since it allows the healthcare practitioners including nurses to develop cultural concordance with their patients as the basis for promoting, supporting and ensuring the cultural and emotional safety of the client (Jongen et al 2017). Handtke et al (2019) stated that the provision of culturally competent patient-provider communication with psychiatric patients can go ahead to improve adherence to medical instructions, boost patient satisfaction, and contribute to better health outcomes.

Implementation

First, adoption of the patient-centered care approach can promote the delivery of customized and standardized mental health services. In mental health setting, patient-centered interventions are geared at identifying and responding to the distinct needs, requirements, and demands of individual psychiatric patients. Using the patient-centered intervention, a better understanding of the religious and spiritual history of the particular patient may determine whether certain religious beliefs or practices affects adherence to medications (Jongen et al 2017). Alongside integration of indigenous worldview, the development or translation of written materials such as documents, forms and other educational content can assist the address the language and communication barriers. Secondly, evidence-based religious interventions, if adopted appropriately, may assist the health practitioner to identify and respond to any violations of clinician-patient boundaries through acknowledging and upholding the positive role of religion and spirituality in psychiatric rehabilitation and recovery. As such, a combination of patient-centered and evidence-based religious interventions may prove instrumental in improving the patient-nurse relationship for purposes of creating favorable healthcare environment where patient’s safety and cultural needs are fully met (Handtke et al 2019).

Evaluation

Patient-perceived Acceptability

Patient satisfaction with mental health care will be measured in order to determine whether the interventions are associated with positive health access or utilization outcomes. It is projected that programs that are culturally-appropriate may record higher rates of program attendance, thereby associated with improvements in service utilization and treatment rate outcomes (Jongen et al 2017).

Improved Health Outcomes

Effectiveness of the implementation will also be determined by levels of reduction in psychiatric symptoms and warning signs of mental health problems experienced by the patient within a 6 month duration (Jongen et al 2017). A number of health outcome factors including improvements in quality of life, positive changes in mental and physical health as well as behavioral changes will be considered in determining the overall effectiveness of cultural-competence mental health interventions for psychiatric patients (Mollah et al 2018).Cultural Consideration in Mental Health

Conclusion

Patient-centered interventions have proven successful in the past when adopted as a viable strategy to enhance quality of healthcare, access to health care, and to eliminate/reduce health disparities, especially in mental health settings. Ensuring the cultural safety of patients is instrumental in the realization of cultural competency through identifying and responding to the distinct cultural needs and expectations of individuals in tough with mental health facilities. Institutional changes (e.g. language and cultural training) in favor of cultural competency must be embraced in psychiatric units as the starting point ensuring effective and clear communication between health service providers and users for attaining quality, holistic and safe healthcare provision.

References

Handtke, O. et al (2019).Culturally competent healthcare – A scoping review of strategies implemented in healthcare organizations and a model of culturally competent healthcare provision. PLOS Health, 1-20.

Jongen, C.S. et al (2017).The Implementation and Evaluation of Health Promotion Services and Programs to Improve Cultural Competency: A Systematic Scoping Review. Frontiers in Public Health, 11-23.

Khosravi, M. et al (2020).The relationship between dietary patterns and depression mediated by serum levels of Folate and vitamin B12. BMC Psychiatry, 20(63), 1-15.

Mollah, T.N. et al (2018).How do mental health practitioners operationalise cultural competency in everyday practice? A qualitative analysis. BMC Health Services Research, 18:480-460.

Salami, B. et al (2018).Access and utilization of mental health services for immigrants and refugees: Perspectives of immigrant service providers. International Journal of Mental Health Nursing, 28(1), 152-161. Cultural Consideration in Mental Health