Cultural Competence among practitioners working for Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) - a summary
Recently, the Cognitive Behaviour Therapist released an article exploring whether practitioners working for IAPT are culturally competent to deal with the needs of minoritised communities. In this blog post, we summarise the main points highlighted in the article:
The article discussed the barriers that individuals from ethnic minority communities face in accessing mental healthcare, including cultural nuances and scepticism towards psychotherapy. It emphasised the need for mental health practitioners to consider cultural issues and patient experiences to maximise recovery goals.
Therapists encountered cultural dissonance during therapy, including difficulties in communicating Western mental health concepts to service users from BAME communities. Therapists found that family dynamics, traditional values, and faith played a crucial role in the uptake of therapy, and cultural differences could impact therapeutic engagement.
Therapists in the study found it difficult to access appropriate culturally adapted resources for their patients, especially for those with limited reading and writing literacy.
The article found that the use of interpreters in therapy can create issues with empathy and attachment, and therapists must rely on non-verbal cues to understand the patient's responses.
In the article, therapists' cultural competency needs are explored, including recognition of limitations in cultural knowledge, the need for cultural competency development as a shared endeavour, and the importance of training and supervision. Only a few therapists received cultural competency training throughout their careers, and those who did found it to be inadequate and not tailored to ethnic minority communities.
Overall, there is an urgent need and desire for more cultural competency training. This is to ensure therapists can address the challenges faced by BAME service users in accessing and engaging with mental health services. This is why Nafsiyat provides Cultural Competence training that develops participants’ intercultural awareness and ability to support those from minoritised backgrounds.
To sign up for our CPD-certified Cultural Competence workshop, click here.