Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of tables
- List of boxes
- List of figures
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Part 1 Theoretical and general issues
- Part 2 Specific mental health conditions across cultures
- Part 3 Management issues in the cultural context
- 19 Cross-cultural psychiatric assessment
- 20 Clinical management of patients across cultures
- 21 Ethnic and cultural factors in psychopharmacology
- 22 Communication with patients from other cultures: the place of explanatory models
- 23 Working with patients with religious beliefs
- 24 Interpreter-mediated psychiatric interviews
- 25 Treatment of victims of trauma
- 26 Effective psychotherapy in an ethnically and culturally diverse society
- 27 Diversity training for psychiatrists
- 28 Informing progress towards race equality in mental healthcare: is routine data collection adequate?
- 29 Towards social inclusion in mental health?
- Index
24 - Interpreter-mediated psychiatric interviews
from Part 3 - Management issues in the cultural context
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2018
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of tables
- List of boxes
- List of figures
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Part 1 Theoretical and general issues
- Part 2 Specific mental health conditions across cultures
- Part 3 Management issues in the cultural context
- 19 Cross-cultural psychiatric assessment
- 20 Clinical management of patients across cultures
- 21 Ethnic and cultural factors in psychopharmacology
- 22 Communication with patients from other cultures: the place of explanatory models
- 23 Working with patients with religious beliefs
- 24 Interpreter-mediated psychiatric interviews
- 25 Treatment of victims of trauma
- 26 Effective psychotherapy in an ethnically and culturally diverse society
- 27 Diversity training for psychiatrists
- 28 Informing progress towards race equality in mental healthcare: is routine data collection adequate?
- 29 Towards social inclusion in mental health?
- Index
Summary
Summary Language is the essential psychiatric tool for eliciting history and mental state. Both diagnosis and treatment are handicapped if there is no common language between doctor and patient and understanding is facilitated through a third party, who usually has no psychiatric training. Many factors can affect this process, resulting in a convoluted interview and greater potential for misunderstandings and diagnostic errors. Linguistics and the use of interpreters are rarely mentioned in standard psychiatric texts. The different processes of translation and interpretation and their use in psychiatry are explored here. The variety of errors and pitfalls described in the literature are considered. We offer advice on the use of trained and untrained interpreters to minimise errors and make the most of the information available.
In a language that we know we have substituted for the opacity of sounds the transparency of ideas. But a language that we do not know is a fortress sealed within whose walls the one we love is free to play false, while we, standing outside desperately keyed up in one impotence, can see, can prevent nothing.
Marcel Proust, quoted in Antinucci-Mark (1990)Language is the principal investigative and therapeutic tool in psychiatry. Interference with communication impairs our ability to assess a patient comprehensively. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the situation where patient and professional are separated by a language barrier, creating a state of dependency on an interpreter, who holds the key to mutual understanding. In today's multiracial society, particularly in larger cities, it is not uncommon to encounter such a situation, where particular skills are required of both interpreter and doctor. Nevertheless, the study of linguistics in relation to psychiatry is rarely mentioned in psychiatric texts, where disorders of communication are often seen as a consequence of disordered attention and the important influences of social cognition and context are ignored (Thomas & Fraser, 1994). A survey of 1000 professionals working in different psychiatric services in Australia found that more than one-third reported having contact, at least on a weekly basis, with patients with whom effective communication was either limited or impossible because of language barriers (Minas et al, 1994).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Clinical Topics in Cultural Psychiatry , pp. 306 - 318Publisher: Royal College of PsychiatristsPrint publication year: 2010