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Kamaldeep Bhui is a senior lecturer in social and epidemiological psychiatry at St Bartholomew's and The Royal London School of Medicine and Dentistry (Queen Mary and Westfied College, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS, UK; k.s.bhui{at}mds.qmw.ac.uk). He is interested in cross-cultural and epidemiological psychiatry, service development and explanatory models of illness. Dinesh Bhugra is a reader in cultural psychiatry and heads the Section of Cultural Psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry, London. His research interests include cultural factors in the aetiology and diagnosis of mental illness, religion, sexual dysfunction and sexual deviation.
A substantial body of research indicates that, for people from Black and Asian1 ethnic minorities, access to, utilisation of and treatments prescribed by mental health services differ from those for White people (Lloyd & Moodley, 1992; for a review see Bhui, 1997). Pathways to mental health care are important, and the widely varying pathways taken in various societies may reflect many factors: the attractiveness and cultural appropriateness of services; attitudes towards services; previous experiences; and culturally defined lay referral systems (Goldberg, 1999). Contact with mental health care services may be imposed on the individual, but people who choose to engage with services usually do so only if they think that their changed state of functioning is health-related and potentially remediable through these services. In such cases, they will contact whoever they perceive to be the most appropriate carer, and these carers are often not part of a national health care network.
The pathway to care approach focuses on the point of access to care and the integration of care by culturally diverse carers. For example, if for AfricanCaribbean men in crisis the most common point of access to mental health services is through the police and the criminal justice systems rather than through their general practitioner (GP), then the challenge is to explore the reasons for this at the interface of these agencies. Carers include the popular and folk sectors of health care provision as well as standard primary and secondary care services and the voluntary sector. Once the range of perceived carers for a cultural group is known, these can be considered as potential sites of case identification and intervention.
The development of a model for Black and Asian ethnic minorities requires that these other access points be taken into consideration.
| Goldberg & Huxley's model |
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Although services have continued to evolve, the model has only recently been modified. Commander et al (1997) added a Mental Health Act level. Moodley & Perkins (1991) explored routes to care, trying to conceptualise the pathways taken by AfricanCaribbean people admitted to in-patient care and finding that the police and accident and emergency departments are important. The model shown in Fig. 1
is based on Goldberg & Huxley's original, but it includes several additional stages to reflect the appraisal, expression and presentation of distress in primary care, as well as the appraisal of community distress. It also shows the stages at which the care pathway could be strengthened by the involvement of the voluntary sector, traditional healers, specialist services or liaison from psychiatrists.
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| Community-level distress and the lay referral system |
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Gray (1999) has argued that the voluntary sector is the most appropriate and least stigmatising source of help for Black patients, but the voluntary sector rarely figures in the strategic development of mental health services for Black and Asian patients in the UK. The inclusion of the voluntary sector in the pathway model, together with health promotion, schools, places of worship and traditional healers, leads to a more complex but comprehensive model, matching more closely the help-seeking narratives of Black and Asian people. Another variable that is often ignored within this model is the influence of the gender of individuals on help-seeking.
Research data
Access to and use of services from community-level distress
Primary care consultation rates
| Primary care: presentation, detection and referral to specialist services |
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It is likely that variations in local service configurations and professional practice influence detection rates as much as do the cultural origins of the patient. Asian GPs are reported to be poorer detectors of morbidity among Asian patients (Odell et al, 1997). Difficulties of assessment by Asian GPs may not be restricted to Asian patients (Bhui et al, 2001) and may reflect the fact that the cultural views of practitioners can influence the assessment and clinical management of mental disorders (Patel, 1999). The health professional's own explanatory model of illness and its influence on his or her practice have not received adequate attention. It is widely assumed that the uniformity of medical training across different cultures leads to uniformity of skills and values regarding illness. However, in the area of mental illness there is more variation of explanatory models than might be the case with disorders that have demonstrable physical pathologies and abnormalities. However, this explanation alone does not account for the variation in clinical management of different ethnic groups consulting the same pool of GPs. Furthermore, patients' cultural appraisal of their problems, and perhaps their preferred interventions, may differ from those of their primary care physicians, irrespective of the cultural origins of either the professionals or the patients.
Research data
Detection and referral of psychiatric morbidity
| Assessment and admission in general adult services |
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Falkowski et al (1990) showed that Black people were overrepresented among detained absconders from in-patient units. Although Black people often find services unattractive, it is likely that detained patients are more likely to perceive them as unhelpful (Parkman et al, 1997).
Several studies report that admission to in-patient and forensic care among Black patients more frequently follows referral from criminal justice agencies or the police. Moodley & Perkins (1991), however, report that routes into care for AfricanCaribbean people were not statistically significantly different from those for Whites. Cole et al (1995) have shown that admission through the police is more likely if the patient does not have a confidant or GP to support them, and that this is so of all cultural groups. The greater social isolation of those admitted with schizophrenia may explain their propensity to be admitted late, having failed to notice themselves to be ill.
These data suggest that stronger links with the police, courts and prisons are required. All may assist in the diversion of those with mental illness, where this is appropriate, and especially where known patients have fallen out of care and are at risk of ending up in forensic institutions (Bhui et al, 1998; Coid et al, 2000). A rapid access point for families, so that crises can be addressed quickly, is also essential. A further focus of future analysis must be decision-making processes around formal assessments. These must include consideration of attractive, safe and clinically effective alternatives to in-patient admission.
Research data
Admission rates and cirumstances
| Forensic services |
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The excess of contact with the criminal justice system can also result from the individual's dissatisfaction with mental health services (Parkman et al, 1997), or the professional's appraisal of the distress as not needing treatment (Moodley & Perkins, 1991). Another possible explanation is that Black people are not actively managed and retained in primary care services, so that if they become distressed and their distress is not understood it is labelled as psychiatric and they are referred to specialist services (Commander et al, 1997).
We must conclude that either AfricanCaribbean groups are no different in their presentation and the risks posed but that they are assessed to carry higher risks associated with distress, or that AfricanCaribbeans, when distressed and developing psychoses, do present with more violence.
Research data
Prevalence
| Cultural variations in assessment |
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Conversely, culturally sanctioned and acceptable distress experiences may attract pathological explanations from professionals. First-rank symptoms may not have the same diagnostic significance across cultures (Chandrasena, 1987). What psychiatrists call paranoid beliefs have culturally sanctioned value among African and West Indian groups, and the assignation of pathological significance to them may therefore be flawed (Ndetei & Vadher, 1984). Paranoia and religious content to beliefs are more common among West Indians and West Africans (Littlewood & Lipsedge, 1984; Ndetei & Vadher, 1984).
The pathways approach focuses on service levels but it is professional practice that determines the outcome of consultations. Individual attitudes, professional skills and cultural awareness of norms are all influential on the passage through filters and in treatment decisions (Box 1
).
| Box 1 Good practice in assessment Be aware of your own world view and that of your patients and their carers Take into account patients' explanatory models of their illness Assess patients' cultural appraisal of their problems Be aware of racialism in yourself and your patients¤
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| A model of engagement for AfricanCaribbean patients |
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Geneal practitioners' diagnostic skills, knowledge about mental health, early management of mental illness and timely referral to hospital are all potential foci for primary care intervention.
Like all patients, AfricanCaribbean patients too may benefit from, and prefer, management in primary care settings. This may in part be because of the less stigmatising public attitudes towards primary care than towards psychiatric hospitals.
A pathway solution here might be to improve recognition rates and also to increase the skills mix of the primary care team to enable engagement with and active management of AfricanCaribbean people in primary care. Another solution might be to target educational campaigns and relapse prevention strategies at patients. Alternatively, the fundamental nature of services might be changed towards home-based care or early intervention (i.e. services delivered in public health settings rather than in psychiatric units). Such options may in themselves improve engagement, but GP surgeries and psychiatric clinics must take care to avoid the institutionalised attitudes and practices that can flourish in psychiatric hospital environments. Where competent risk assessment permits it, totally different management strategies involving family, neighbours or voluntary sector agencies might be considered as more culturally appropriate.
| Partnerships between the primary care team and other pathway agencies |
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| Box 2 Primary care and other agencies The clinician must take the lead in identifying and maintaining liaison with primary care and other agencies The consultation model should ensure regular liaison with the primary care team Community mental health team (CMHT) members should be represented in the primary care consultation Where appropriate, CMHTs and trusts should use culture brokers (health workers trained to work with communities that have significant ethnic minority populations) Psychiatrists should support and educate primary care teams to engage patients with special needs
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Psychiatrists can play a lead role in education and liaison with partners in care, including GPs, housing workers, and voluntary agencies. Such an approach is especially useful if there is concern about unusual mental states. This assumes that psychiatrists are themselves confident that they can assess complex mental states in patients from Black and Asian ethnic minorities and that they recognise the limitations of their own skills and competencies.
Places of worship, leisure clubs, entertainment venues and culturally attractive independent services may all act as points of first contact. In a recent study, half of the Black users interviewed stated their belief that their treatment and diagnosis would (or might) have been different had they been in contact with a member of staff who understood their experiences as a Black person (a quarter felt that it would have made no difference) (Robertson et al, 2000).
| Conclusions |
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The cultural authenticity of the voluntary and independent sectors may be essential for an engaging service, and primary care teams might usefully liaise with these sectors to maximise the opportunity to manage patients without referral to specialist services.
The pathways approach offers a framework within which health service research, service development and the delivery of quality care may be organised.
| Multiple choice questions |
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| Footnotes |
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| References |
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