Culture and access....

There is a whole wide world out there struggling with mental illness.  And because the United States is a diverse society, even our country has diverse populations dealing with the issues surrounding mental illness.  Today, I read an article on how the Latin community deals with mental illness. Or more accurately, how the Latin community doesn't deal with the reality of mental illness.  This article is very factual and interesting.  Here is the link:  http://bit.ly/1ezU6L2. It lets you know, very clearly, what the problem areas are for our Latin neighbors.  For me, it raised another issue in regards to access.  That is, how important is it for a person intervening to provide mental health care have an understanding of culture in dealing with another cultural group?

Here is my bias.  I think having an understanding of the unique spin that cultural groups might have in dealing with mental illness is crucial.  Reading this article certainly opened my eyes to a whole bunch of ideas that might not have occurred to me in discussing mental health issues in the Latin-American community.  From the fact that dealing with a history of trauma in your country of origin might impact people to the fear that mental illness could lead to deportation.  To the fact that legal, long term living in this country might raise the incidence of mental illness in the Latin community to the impact of poverty.  What are the issues unique to this particular culture?  And what needs to be done to more completely serve them?

I doubt that our system of  mental health services is set up to adequately deal with culture.  Simply because I know our system isn't even adequate to simply deal with the needs of the mentally ill generally.  Access for cultural groups becomes part of the wider problem.  Do we have a cohesive system set up to meet a variety of needs?  What do you think?  And how would you change what we've got?  Let me know!