Working with interpreters across language and culture in mental health

Abstract

Background: Mental health professionals need to be able to work effectively with interpreters to promote good clinical practice and ensure equality of access and service delivery as well as meet the requirements of European law. The process offers practitioners an opportunity to enrich their understanding of the diverse idioms of distress, cultural constructions and explanatory health beliefs. Aims: This paper draws upon the literature and clinical accounts to provide a set of positive practice guidelines on working with interpreters in mental health. Method: Key indicator words for the literature review were ''interpreters and mental health'' and ''language and mental health''. Papers that related purely to linguistic theory, cultural theory, or sign language interpreting were not included. To assist with triangulation of the data the authors also drew upon accounts of support and supervision groups for interpreters and bicultural workers, expert panels on the topic, training programmes and published guidelines for interpreters and clinicians. Results and Conclusions: Mental health services around the world need to be accessible, inclusive, appropriate and accord with best practice and national legislation. The paper reviews opportunities and challenges in working with interpreters in mental health services and offers some positive practice guidelines for clinicians based on the available literature. Declaration of interest: None.

Mind your language: working with interpreters in healthcare settings and therapeutic encounters

“…3. Suggestions about the specific dilemmas of working with an interpreter in the context of relationship and sexual problems are discussed here, the interested reader is referred for detailed good practice guidelines on working with interpreters in a ''mental health'' or therapeutic context to Tribe and Lane (2008) or to the Good Practice Guidelines written for psychologists working in health settings to be found from Autumn (2008) on the British Psychological Society website: www.bps.org.uk 4. The two case studies presented here are based on real cases but in order to ensure clients' anonymity all personal details have been removed and particularities such as gender, presenting problems, place of origin have been changed.…”

Perceived Safety, Quality and Cultural Competency of Maternity Care for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Women in Queensland

“…Culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) individuals (who identify as having certain cultural or linguistic affiliations by virtue of their place of birth, ancestry or ethnic origin, religion, or preferred or spoken language) are generally underserved by health services, experience an unequal burden of disease, confront cultural and communication barriers to accessing appropriate services and receive a lesser quality of care than the remainder of the population [2][3][4][5][6][7][8]. Cultural competency is a common approach to promoting better health for service users from CALD and other minority groups [8,9].…”

Ethical Issues and Potential Solutions Surrounding the Use of Spoken Language Interpreters in Psychology

“…The interpreter functions as the mouth piece for the therapist and client and offers no cultural interpretations of the content of the conversation (Dysart-Gayle, 2005). However, studies have found that most medical and Downloaded by [Umeå University Library] at 15:22 03 April 2015 WRIGHT mental health professionals reported the conduit role was too restrictive in their work with LEP clients (Hsieh & Hong, 2010;Tribe & Keefe, 2009;Tribe & Lane, 2009;Yakushko, 2010). They suggested that the conduit/transmission role was culturally insensitive, as many English idioms lost their meaning in translation (Dysart-Gale, 2005;NCIHC, 2004;Tribe & Keefe, 2009).…”

“…The literature describes three different roles often held by spoken language interpreters: conduit/transmission, cultural broker, or advocate (Dysart-Gale, 2005NICHC, 2004;Tribe & Keefe, 2009;Tribe & Lane, 2009;Yakushko, 2010).…”