Bebe Moore Campbell National Minority Mental Health Awareness Month was established to raise awareness about the unique challenges that underrepresented groups face regarding mental illness in the United States. Racial and ethnic minorities often experience challenges accessing mental healthcare due to inaccessibility to high-quality behavioral health services, cultural stigma surrounding seeking mental health treatment, discrimination, and a general lack of awareness about mental health. It is important to shed light on these challenges and highlight the ways in which healthcare professionals can increase cultural competence and begin to dismantle the barriers that minorities face when seeking mental healthcare.

Source: www.mhanational.org

The HHS Office of Minority Health defines cultural competence as “a set of congruent behaviors, attitudes, and policies that come together in a system, agency, or among professionals that enables effective work in cross-cultural situations.”

Clinicians can develop cultural competence by engaging in the following practices:

• Examining how one’s own beliefs, experiences, and biases affect one’s own definitions of “normal” and “abnormal” behavior
• Seeking cultural knowledge of the populations you serve by not only investing time in getting to know patients and their backgrounds but also by taking advantage of outside sources and training seminars/programs
• Encouraging an open dialogue by providing patients with opportunities to speak about their experiences, current needs, and beliefs
• Considering whether a patient’s perceptions may inhibit or facilitate the counseling process 
• Providing culturally appropriate screening/assessment and becoming aware of common diagnostic biases associated with symptom presentation

Source: samhsa.gov

For more information, contact Bella Faggiano at isabella.faggiano@bcbsri.org