Answer to Question 1
Culturally competent children's mental health services may be provided in a number of ways. For example, in therapy for Hispanic children and adolescents, cultural competence may be achieved by matching children and families with clinicians of the same ethnicity; by customizing the treatment to Hispanic culturalvalues, beliefs, and customs (e.g., familism, spiritualism, and respeto); or by incorporating ethnic and cultural narratives and role play into therapy.
Answer to Question 2
Cultural syndromes refer to a pattern of co-occurring, relatively invariant symptoms associated with a particular cultural group, community, or context (APA, 2013). For example, mal de ojo or the evil eye is a concept that is widespread throughout Mediterranean cultures and Latino communities throughout the world. A malady to which children are especially vulnerable and believed to be caused by a hateful look or glance from a malicious person, the evil eye can cause fitful sleep, crying without apparent cause, diarrhea, vomiting, and fever in children. Cultural syndromes rarely fit neatly into one Western diagnostic category (Alarcn, 2009). In addition, although the cross-cultural validity of Western diagnostic criteria varies widely depending on the disorder, data regarding their validity across cultures for many childhood disorders is lacking (Canino & Alegria, 2008). Therefore, it is important that clinicians assess the extent to which a child's cultural background and context affect the expression of both individual symptoms and clinical disorders.
Nurses may collaborate with social workers, physicians, and other members of the health care team to
Documenting the health history is a crucial step in providing patient care
The health history can be gathered from many sources
Different ways to test hypotheses
Access to Health Plus Mastering Health
Evolution of Treatment for Mental Disorders