Clinical approaches to cultural diversity in mental health care and specificities of French transcultural consultations: A scoping review.

Abstract

Background: Cultural context substantially affects the experience and clinical expression of psychiatric diseases, while cultural factors limit both access to and the effectiveness of care, especially for migrant families requiring the construction of specific types of services. We review the international literature on mental health services that take cultural elements into account and use these data to uncover the specificities of the French model of consultations by a group of transcultural psychotherapists. Methods: Exhaustive review of the international literature through searches of PubMed and PsycINFO. The review includes 32 articles. Results: The specificities of mental health services for migrant families are linked to the host country's migration patterns and citizenship model. In English-speaking countries, specialized services for ethnic minorities offer ethnic matching of the therapist and patient. In Canada, indirect transcultural consultation services have existed since the late 1990s. Australia emphasizes the networking of consultation services and professional training in cultural competence, while the Nordic countries (Sweden, Finland, Norway, and Denmark) focus management on trauma. In France, psychotherapy services, with flexible numbers of therapists involved according to the situation, have existed since 1990. Discussion: Most initiatives place emphasis on training and supervision, in an indirect approach not specifically focused on the patient, or offer cultural matching of patient and therapist. The French transcultural approach, on the contrary, makes the family's culture and its cultural diversity an integral part of the therapy process. Scientific publications clearly demonstrate the clinical efficacy of this method.

A qualitative exploration of what works for migrant adolescents in transcultural psychotherapy: perceptions of adolescents, their parents, and their therapists

“…Numerous responses have been proposed to this growing public health issue, depending on the mental health care context and on each country's history and pattern of migration [10,11]. Some countries, such as the United States, have promoted ethnic matching between therapists and patients, but most countries have focused on increasing cultural competence of professionals by training and supervision and developed models relying on interpreters and cultural mediators [12][13][14].…”