Service gaps related to culturally appropriate mental health care for African immigrants

Abstract

The population of overseas‐born Australians continues to grow including the recent increase of immigrants and refugees from African countries. Due to this increase, healthcare services need to assess if current available services are culturally appropriate for African immigrant inpatients. This qualitative study, with a quality improvement focus, examined current services to identify key service gaps and consider recommendation to improve care of African immigrant mental health inpatients in the hospital from the point of view of staff working within the organisation. What was revealed is that services currently offered to African mental health inpatients were culturally inappropriate. Emerging themes included inadequate interpreter services, lack of cultural awareness staff training, lack of organisation link with other services, unmet spiritual needs, use of staff/families as interpreters, culturally inappropriate information, and lack of or inadequate culturally appropriate policies and framework. Changes to current practices are recommended to provide culturally appropriate mental health care to African inpatients.

Access to health services among culturally and linguistically diverse populations in the Australian universal health care system: issues and challenges

“…Furthermore, the role of reception staff and recording of the language and interpreter's needs was well defined but lacked effective systems to share the information with clinicians [ 87 ]. Providers' lack of cultural and spiritual awareness, culturally inappropriate and inadequate information influenced to the provision of mental health services [ 88 ].…”

“…For example, a study found that 40% of refugee women giving birth in Australia required interpreter services [ 69 ], and only 48% reported using the government-funded translating and interpreting service [ 87 ]. Lack of interpreter services and poor availability of multilingual health materials further challenged getting necessary information on health, diseases, and services [ 81 , 88 ]. Current interpretation policy does not allow family members and relatives as interpreters.…”

Understanding the healthcare experiences and needs of African immigrants in the United States: a scoping review

“…Those studies revealed a number of barriers to African immigrants' healthcare access that were similar to U.S. studies [31][32][33]. For instance, African immigrants in other countries, like in the U.S., were found to be often viewed as a part of a larger homogeneous population [34][35][36]. However, unlike in the U.S., in some other countries, African immigrants are grouped together in the same immigrant population with Asian and Latin Americans [37,38].…”

Suffering experiences of people with cancer undergoing chemotherapy: A meta‐ethnographic study

“…Some even opted to replace chemotherapy with spiritual treatments. Wamwayi et al (2019) showed that Australian health services offered to African mental health patients were culturally inadequate, a worrying fact given the intense flow of African immigrants and refugees into that country. The authors pointed out the need to formulate culturally sensitive policies, and to consider including interpreters, training teams, and alignment of spiritual care with patients’ beliefs.…”