A recent article, published in the Archives of Scientific Psychology, describes how racial, ethnic, cultural, and national disparities in counseling and psychotherapy outcomes are inevitable, but eliminating global mental health disparities with indigenous healing is not. After describing the incongruence of exporting psychotherapy to other countries, Robinder Bedi, a psychologist and researcher from the University of British Columbia, suggests an integration of local indigenous practices with culturally competent psychotherapy practices to address mental health disparities.
“Although this [exporting psychotherapy cross-culturally] is generally done with good intentions to promote global mental health and to address differences in mental health across the world, these practices can be inconsistent with the societal values and collective beliefs of individuals in non-Western countries and can sometimes lead to more harm than good,” writes Bedi, “Instead, promoting traditional healers and indigenous healing practices and integrating them with culturally adapted counseling and psychotherapy is recommended to reduce international mental health disparities.”
The Lancet Commission on Global Mental Health and Sustainable Development recently published a report detailing plans to “scale up” mental health care across the globe. Simultaneously, the UK government hosted a Global Mental Health Ministerial Summitproposing to globally implement mental health policies. In contrast, Bedi argues that the notion of utilizing western psychotherapy with racial and ethnic minority individuals within Western countries as well as promoting its use to non-Western countries “has not received the careful deliberation that it deserves.” Bedi, among other mental health professionals, activists, and service users, challenges the cross-cultural applicability of Western mental health healing practices and calls for a more intentional approach to addressing global mental health disparities.
[For more on this story by Hannah Emerson, go to https://www.madinamerica.com/2...-health-disparities/]
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