Publications
Recent Publication Highlights
CIMH publications over the past year included reports of work on mental health issues following the 1988 Yun Nan (China) earthquake, the mental health of immigrant and refugee adolescents in Australia, novel treatment models for mental health services for immigrants and psychopharmacology. These papers were published in the Medical Journal of Australia, Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, Australasian Journal of Dermatology and other key international journals.
A new book, Cross-Cultural Assessment for Mental Health Settings (L. Andary, Y. Stolk & S. Klimidis), recently published by Australian Academic Press, will support mental health clinicians and students training in mental health occupations to obtain an understanding of the clinical issues in working in a cross-cultural context. It progresses from questioning universalist assumptions of current practice to engaging discussion on key aspects of culturally sensitive clinical practice. Using a mixture of theory and case analysis it serves as a teaching and learning tool for mental health staff and students. It centres discussion into issues of language and translation, cultural values as they impact on the clinical process, cultural beliefs and explanatory models of illness, and the process of inter-cultural negotiation regarding the nature of the problem between clinician and client. The focus is predominantly on clinical assessment issues as these foreshadow treatment planning and choice.