Cultural Competency in Mental Health

This assignment delves into the crucial aspect of cultural competency for mental health practitioners. It emphasizes the importance of respecting clients' dignity, cultural values, and beliefs when addressing their mental health needs. The focus is on developing strong communication skills, demonstrating sensitivity, and building trusting relationships with individuals from diverse backgrounds.

Running head: MENTAL HEALTH AND WELLNESS
Mental Health and Wellness
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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MENTAL HEALTH AND WELLNESS
Table of Contents
Mental health and Wellness.......................................................................................................2
Legal standards.......................................................................................................................2
Ethical standards....................................................................................................................2
Community standards.............................................................................................................3
Strategies to promote self-care among mental health and wellness providers...........................3
Cultural impact on mental health and wellbeing........................................................................4
Personal competency to work with people from different backgrounds....................................5
References..................................................................................................................................6

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Mental health and Wellness
Mental health is an important domain in the healthcare system. The principal pillar of
the mental health services is proper engagement between the patient and the practitioner.
However, biological interventions, psychological treatments, empathy, and proper
understanding of the expert about the "diseased condition" are important for successful
outcomes (Elliott, Huizinga & Menard, 2012).
Legal standards
Nurses or the healthcare practitioner must work in accordance with the prevalent
nursing standards via following the legal and ethical requirement. Nurses are also responsible
for the generation and management of information. Here information means documents
related to health records. They are also required to perform with professionalism and
integrity. Thus, the information recorded against the any mental health patients must be non-
judgmental and relevant to mental healthcare and treatment of the person receiving the
mental health service (Szmukler, Daw & Callard, 2014). Moreover, the patient’s information
must be kept confidential, these encompass all type of data including clinical, and research
and holds true irrespective of the medium in which in has been documented.
Ethical standards
The mental health care practitioner must give value to quality nursing to all people,
irrespective to cast, gender and financial background. Mental health nurses are required to
value respect and kindness for self and for the patients. Here the value means moral worth,
dignity of oneself along with respecting the individual ethical values that the people or mental
health patients might nurture in the context of health care. Another important ethical aspect of
mental health nursing is, nurses are required to value the diversity of the people along with
informed decision-making. Here informed decision-making means valuing the legal and the

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moral rights of the people, including the children while assisting them in to determine the
best possible care (Robson et al., 2013).
Moreover, in order to remain on the upper side of the ethical parameter, a mental
health provide must consider several branches of ethical principles while delivering care.
Three main branches of the ethical principle in mental health care include beneficence, non-
maleficience and autonomy (Grace, 2017).
Community standards
The mental health practitioner needs to critically consider the social and the cultural
diversity of its consumers while addressing their mental health needs. There are diverse group
of people residing in United States. The indigenous people are culturally and linguistically
diverse with different religious and spiritual beliefs along with intellectual disability and poor
socio-economic status. A mental health care practitioner needs to address the issues
associated with bias, prejudice and discrimination while caring for this people (Long, 2012).
Planning and proper implementation of the mental health service will depend on the
evaluation of cultural differences and the cultural values of the aboriginal community.
Strategies to promote self-care among mental health and wellness providers
Work related stress causes emotional exhaustion, depolarization or complete loss of
empathy and decrease in the sense of accomplishment. However, in order to promote quality
care to the mental health patients, a mental health care practitioner must remain on the high
side of energy level, full with compassion and empathy (Puig et al., 2012). So in order
prevent burn out and compassion fatigue, mental health and wellness providers must practice
self-care. To preach self-care there must be proper training among the mental health and
wellness providers. This training will help them to fight against stress via handling the

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situation effectively. Other strategies include, strong workplace environment, reduction in
workload and high patient to nurse ratio (Puig et al., 2012).
Cultural impact on mental health and wellbeing
Culture of a patient or the consumer of the mental health care services has huge
impact on several aspects of mental health and wellbeing and this is driven by the sense of
belonging, connectivity and individual ability to recover. General perception about the
cultural characteristics of a given aboriginal race can invite stereotyping of individuals. This
stereotyping is based on appearance of that person or affiliation (Panter-Brick & Eggerman,
2012). In United States, there lies a step inequality in health among originals and indigenous
people. Culture has a huge impact on an individual’s ability to recover. For example in
aboriginal people, live in rented housing with restricted surface area and over crowing of
people. It is their culture to live together and to visit their far or extended family members
during any occasion round the year. This frequent or constant overcrowding of people
hampers the equilibrium of the mental health and well-being. Moreover, healthy food habits
is an important determinant of mental health and well being but the aboriginal people do not
have the culture of observing a healthy diet and thus creating barrier towards a mental health
well being (Fazel et al., 2012). Not only the aboriginal, the young crowd of US prefers to live
a life full of intoxication including over-consumption of alcohol and smoking and this
unhealthy lifestyle as imposed via the urban culture affect their mental health equilibrium
(Elliott, Huizinga & Menard, 2012). Moreover, culture also affects the nature of the treatment
and thus further delaying the process of mental well being. Sense of belonging is a unique
phenomenon on mental health nursing. Sense of belonging is the basic human need. It is
defined as a sense of personal involvement into a social system (Museus & Maramba, 2011).
Such involvements make a person to feel an integral part of the system. Moreover, the sense

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belongings also specify recognition and acceptance. The majority of the population of US
suffers from insecurity and this insecurity may come from love life, professional life or
academic life. Such insecurities are also influenced by the culture, like in the US culture,
people need to be professionally successful and this constant pressure creates a sense of
insecurity, affecting the sense of belonging and that affects the mental well being (Jorm,
2012). The cultural thoughts also promote a sense of connectivity among the people and
affecting the mental health and well being.
Personal competency to work with people from different backgrounds
While working as a mental health practitioner and serving people from different
cultural backgrounds the first thing, which I will try to, keep in mind is, providing respect to
their dignity. Respecting their dignity, their cultural thoughts and values will help me to
access their mental complications and resolve them accordingly via establishing a friendly
relationship with them (Muntean, Tomita & Ungureanu, 2013). Other personal competency,
which I think, is effective or I will work on while working with different background people
are communication skills and proper demonstration of sensitivity.

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References
Elliott, D. S., Huizinga, D., & Menard, S. (2012). Multiple problem youth: Delinquency,
substance use, and mental health problems. Springer Science & Business Media.
42(7), 171-175.
Fazel, M., Reed, R. V., Panter-Brick, C., & Stein, A. (2012). Mental health of displaced and
refugee children resettled in high-income countries: risk and protective factors. The
Lancet, 379(9812), 266-282.
Grace, P. J. (2017). Nursing ethics and professional responsibility in advanced practice.
Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Jorm, A. F. (2012). Mental health literacy: empowering the community to take action for
better mental health. American Psychologist, 67(3), 231.
Long, T. B. (2012). Overview of teaching strategies for cultural competence in nursing
students. Journal of cultural diversity, 19(3), 102.
Muntean, A., Tomita, M., & Ungureanu, R. (2013). The Role of the Community Nurse in
Promoting Health and Human Dignity-Narrative Review Article. Iranian journal of
public health, 42(10), 1077.
Museus, S. D., & Maramba, D. C. (2011). The impact of culture on Filipino American
students' sense of belonging. The Review of Higher Education, 34(2), 231-258.
Panter-Brick, C., & Eggerman, M. (2012). Understanding culture, resilience, and mental
health: The production of hope. In The social ecology of resilience (pp. 369-386).
Springer New York.

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Puig, A., Baggs, A., Mixon, K., Park, Y. M., Kim, B. Y., & Lee, S. M. (2012). Relationship
between job burnout and personal wellness in mental health professionals. Journal of
Employment Counseling, 49(3), 98-109.
Robson, D., Haddad, M., Gray, R., & Gournay, K. (2013). Mental health nursing and
physical health care: A cross‐sectional study of nurses' attitudes, practice, and
perceived training needs for the physical health care of people with severe mental
illness. International Journal of Mental Health Nursing, 22(5), 409-417.
Szmukler, G., Daw, R., & Callard, F. (2014). Mental health law and the UN Convention on
the rights of persons with disabilities. International journal of law and
psychiatry, 37(3), 245-252.