ABSTRACT
This chapter identifies the possible impacts of cultural issues on mental health and mental health care. It focuses on one’s own cultural identity as the basis for culturally safe care. The chapter also identifies some strategies for providing culturally safe mental health services. The encounter between a nurse and a service user and their family and community may involve an interaction between two or more people with multiple and very different identities. For the nurse, the service user, their family and community, a wide range of beliefs, experiences, norms and values will influence perceptions of mental health and mental health care. Psychiatry is a system of practices firmly set within a Western scientific tradition. Consideration of the impact of culture on clinical practice begins with a review of the culturally determined nature of Western psychiatry. The process of psychiatric and mental health nursing involves establishing collaborative therapeutic relationships with service users on the basis of their need for nursing care.
