culture in treatment

Question 1

culture

Answer 1

a set of beliefs and values characteristic of a community

Question 2

culture and treatment

Answer 2

• cultural factors can influence compliance with treatment
• cultural thoughts of illness must be considered when treating patients
• clinician and patient must establish a common interpretation of the disorder and frame it in culturally appropriate terms, meaning that the treatment must make sense to the patient

Question 3

Kenzie et al (1987)

Answer 3

• to investigate compliance of treatment in southeast asian participants with depression
• 41 depressed southeast asians who underwent long term treatments of depression with tryciclic antidepressants. their TCA blood levels were measured
• a therapeutic level of medicine was only found in 15% of the patients. no detectable TCA were found in 61% if the patients. this indicates a high incidence of non-compliance with the treatment. cambodian patients were significantly more compliant than vietnamese and mien patients. after patient education and a discussion of benefits and problems with medication, compliance increased with vietnamese and cambodians but not with mien
• cultural and educational factors influence compliance with medicine and responsiveness to education. the non compliance rates probably reflect beliefs about illness and education usage. cultural attitudes towards authority may lead to noncompliance

Question 4

Griner and Smith (2006) meta analysis

Answer 4

• to examine the benefit of culturally adapted treatments
• 76 studies that included quantitative indication of the effectiveness of therapy for 25,000 patients
• a moderately strong benefit of culturally adapted interventions was found. older participants were more responsive to culturally adapted treatment, because they might be less acculturated. when therapists spoke the participants native language, therapy was more than twice as affective than when therapists spoke english. in the case of group interventions, treatment from same race participants were for times more effective than treatments for mixed race groups
• culturally sensitive treatments are generally effective. specially when targeted to specific groups of individuals based on their cultural backgrounds