Better understanding of cultural context vital component of global mental health

TORONTO — Identifying differences in diagnostic practices among psychiatrists across the world can help improve cultural competency among clinicians, according to data presented here at the American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting.“Understanding how different psychiatrists in different parts of the world diagnose mental illness is a way for us to all be better international psychiatrists,” Jhilam Biswas, MD, fellow at the University of Massachusetts Psychiatry and the Law Program, said during a presentation here. “Particularly, the field of global mental health is certainly enhancing and becoming a large part of psychiatric training programs today. A big problem in psychiatry is that psychiatrists don’t often feel comfortable in different cultural contexts, so this might be an evidence-based way of looking at how different psychiatrists diagnose mental illness.”