Transcultural telepsychiatry and its impact on patient satisfaction

Abstract

A telepsychiatry project was conducted to improve access to culturally appropriate care providers (i.e. culturally competent, bilingual clinicians) by the use of videoconferencing. A self-completed retrospective questionnaire survey was conducted with asylum seekers, refugees and migrants. The purpose of the referral was either for diagnostic assessment with a subsequent treatment recommendation, or for treatment via telepsychiatry. The service was free of charge for the patients involved. Over a period of 34 months (starting in January 2005), 61 patients participated in the pilot project. The patients' residency status was: refugees (n = 45), asylum seekers (n = 12), migrants (n = 3) and domestic (n = 1). A total of 318 telepsychiatry sessions (lasting 35-45 min) was conducted, with an average of 5.2 sessions per patient. Nine languages were spoken during the study period (Danish, Arabic, Farsi, Somali, Kurdish, Polish, Bosnian, Serbian and Croatian). A total of 52 patients completed the questionnaire. Patients reported a high level of satisfaction and willingness to use telepsychiatry again and recommend it to others. They preferred telepsychiatry via their mother tongue, rather than interpreter-assisted care.

Effectiveness and feasibility of telepsychiatry in resource constrained environments? A systematic review of the evidence

“…38 This should include understanding of the health beliefs and practices of the local community and clients from different cultural backgrounds. 17 Telepsychiatry is reported to provide a unique opportunity for psychiatrists to communicate with patients in their mother tongue rather than through interpreters [83][84] , and patients reported a high level of acceptance and satisfaction with transcultural telepsychiatry. 83 However, in a country such as South Africa most psychiatry services require the use of interpreters.…”

Psicoterapia pela Internet: viável ou inviável?

“…Resultados positivos têm sido encontrados na utilização de terapias baseadas na internet para o tratamento da depressão (Kessler et al, 2009), ansiedade , fobia , transtorno do pânico (Bergström et al, 2010), estresse pós-traumático (Klein et al, 2010) e transtornos alimentares (Carrad et al, 2011). Estudos recentes mostram que a terapia online também pode ser promissora no tratamento das adições e do jogo patológico (Gainsbury & Blaszczynski, 2011), da psicose (Sharp, Kobak, & Osman, 2011), de refugiados e imigrantes (Mucic, 2010), de depressão em pacientes terminais (Cluver, Schuyler, Frueh, Brescia, & Arana, 2005) e de deficientes auditivos (Moore, Guthmann, Rogers, Frakeer, & Embree, 2009). Não apenas adultos podem beneficiar-se da psicoterapia pela internet mas também adolescentes e crianças (March, Spence, & Donovan, 2009;Spence et al, 2011).…”

Current research in transcultural psychiatry in the Nordic countries

“…Among innovative and promising pedagogical methodologies, virtual encounters (virtual patient with refugee trauma, virtual interpreter, and virtual advisor), and their evaluation is an innovative complementary tool for clinicians and medical students in psychiatry and needs further development (Courteille, Ekblad, Pantziaras, Mollica, & Fors, 2010). Telepsychiatry has been used clinically in Greenland and Denmark in the treatment of traumatized refugees, and results are promising (Mucic, 2010). Research on the diagnostic evaluation of dementia (Nielsen, Andersen, Kastrup, Phung, & Waldemar, 2011) demonstrates that dementia diagnoses among ethnic minorities have been based on insufficient investigation and that there is a need to improve the validity of dementia diagnoses.…”