The role of culture in early interventions
Cultures play a major role in shaping people’s behaviours and attitudes. They also shape individuals’ social and cognitive development, and the idioms of distress they use and the pathways into care they take. In addition, cultures shape the causation, precipitation, and perpetuation of psychiatric symptoms which may not always fit neatly into diagnostic categories. Cultures define what is normal and what is abnormal or deviant. This, in turn, will influence how diseases are recognized and what early intervention strategies are put into place. For psychoses, the untreated duration of mental illness can last for years depending upon the resources available and the models of illness. The preclinical state is often a non-state and offers a critical threshold, and, according to resources, cultures will often dictate, in subtle ways, what the threshold is in order to develop psychiatric services. In many cultures—depending upon the available services and the personality of individuals, as well as the level of family support—a risk assessment may well contribute to stress and may also affect the likelihood of getting health or other insurance. It may also lead to personal difficulties, such as marriage problems. Clinicians need to remember that cultural differences in communication between doctors and patients may well contribute to tensions and poor therapeutic engagement if the patients’ or their carers’ views and explanatory models are not taken into account.