ABSTRACT
As globalization becomes more widespread around the world and with the increasing movement of people across national borders, clinicians are more likely than ever to encounter people with different backgrounds, ethnicity, ‘race’, orientations, values and beliefs in their practice. This means that patients/service users will present to the mental health services with different worldviews, and varied ways of experiencing problems and situations which may be different or similar to those held by the clinician who is working with them.
For the modern clinician, cultural competence is a necessary and highly important asset. Patients are particularly sensitive to cultural incompetence acts: or racism such as stereotyping, microaggressions and generally failing to listen to and learn from the patients’ experiences to reach better assessments and provide interventions that are tailored to their needs. Since clinicians are likely to differ from their patients in at least one area (e.g. race, education, socioeconomic status, religion), all encounters can be considered cross-cultural. It is important that clinicians recognize this reality and that they approach every encounter with humbleness, introspection and curiosity and at the same striving to treat every patient as an individual, respectfully and humanely.
