Understanding Cultural Differences: Health, Illness Perceptions

This essay explores the significant role of culture in shaping perceptions and responses to health and illness. It highlights how cultural backgrounds influence family, professional, and societal understanding of developmental disabilities and their treatments. The essay discusses the varying meanings of well-being, illness, and disabilities across cultures and time, noting potential disagreements between healthcare providers and patients regarding the reasons for care visits and overall health status. It emphasizes that many mental well-being care theories and practices have evolved from Western cultural traditions, potentially causing issues when applied to non-Western cultures without considering their complexities. The conclusion emphasizes the vast impact of culture on well-being, affecting perceptions of health, illness, and death, as well as beliefs about the causes of illness, approaches to health promotion, and preferred care treatments.

TASK 2

TABLE OF CONTENT
 INTRODUCTION
 Analyse cultural differences in perceptions of, and responses to, health and illness.
 CONCLUSION
 REFERENCES

INTRODUCTION
 The presentation can consider the role of culture in
shaping the family, professional as well as the society
knowledge and understanding of the developmental
disabilities as well as their treatments.
 The meaning of both well-being, illness as well as
disabilities can greatly vary within the cultures and
across time.

Analyse cultural differences in perceptions
of, and responses to, health and illness.
 The well-being care providers as well as the vulnerable patients often disagree within the terms of perception of
reasons for the care visits as well as overall well-being status or any physical functioning.
 The concept of culture is generally a wide term which can be explained in various manner, depending over the
field of study as well as the perspectives of an individual using the particular terminology.
 It is generally a multifaceted concept which is impacted by various problems like class, gender, language,
religions as well as nationality.
 In context with sociological perspectives, it can depict the concept of culture as a set of values which the people
of a group can hold as well as involves the norms which they follow and the material goods which they create as
well.
 The concept of culture, in itself, is being influenced by a wider context of both the social norms and problems as
well.

CONT.
 In this, many of the care theories and care practices of mental well-being, consisting the psychiatric and a mainstream psychology,
has been evolved from the western cultural traditions and a western understanding of the people conditions.
 In this, the idea of Cartesian dualism of both mind and body, the positivism as well as reductionism has been placed central to the
improvement of the mainstream mental well-being care services as they are broadly executed nowadays.
 In addition to this, the mono-cultural understanding of the mental well-being have given the most powerful conceptual frameworks
as well as tools for the relief of the specific mental issues in various settings, they have also been very problematic when applied to
the context of non-western cultures without consideration of the complexities which working within the cultures can bring with it.
 In addition to this, the western cultural approaches towards well-being generally tend to be a predicted on a model which can
concentrate over a person's experience of intra-psychic or its pathology, while the culture can be based more over familial
procedures or over community as well.
 In addition to this, the diversities among the culture can make a specific impact on various aspects of mental well-being across the
world, generally ranging from the pathways in which the well-being and disease both are detected, well-being seeking behaviours,
attitudes of the service user and the care professionals and a mental well-being care service.

CONCLUSION
 From the discussion, it is concluded that the impact
of culture on the well-being is generally vast.
 It can affects the perceptions of well-being, illness as
well as death, beliefs about the causes of the illness,
approaches to the well-being promotions, how illness
as well as pain are being experienced as well as
expressed, where the vulnerable patients seek aid, as
well as the types of care treatment patients prefer.

REFERENCES
 Maier, L.J., Ferris, J.A. and Winstock, A.R., 2018.
Pharmacological cognitive enhancement among non-ADHD
individuals—A cross-sectional study in 15
countries. International Journal of Drug Policy, 58, pp.104-
112.
 Clauss-Ehlers, C.S., Chiriboga, D.A., Hunter, S.J., Roysircar,
G. and Tummala-Narra, P., 2019. APA Multicultural Guidelines
executive summary: Ecological approach to context, identity,
and intersectionality. American Psychologist, 74(2), p.232.