Title: Culture & Society's Influence on Mental Health Pasadena Villa
Headings: Culture & Society’s Influence on Mental Health
Culture & Society’s Influence on Mental Health
The Scope of Mental Health Disorders among Cultural Groups
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Content: Latino participants described very little stigma associated with nervios, an idiom used to describe susceptibility to nervousness, but viewed psychiatric labels as socially damaging. The researchers’ findings suggest a number of differences in the ways people from various ethnic and racial backgrounds interpret and define mental illnesses. The participants’ first-person narratives provide valuable insight into how members of various cultural and social groups accept and use mental health care. Mental health practitioners can utilize the information gained from the first-person narratives to improve acceptance and utilization of and compliance with treatment in diverse populations. Ethnic, racial, and cultural minorities experience a special social and economic environment of inequality that increases their risk for exposure to racism and discrimination, violence, and poverty. There is a strong association between poverty and mental illness, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), with common mental disorders occurring about twice as often among poor people as in the rich. The highest rates of mental illness often occur in those with the lowest levels of education and in the unemployed. In particular, individuals with the lowest socioeconomic status have eight times the relative risk for schizophrenia than those in the top socioeconomic class. The relationship between socioeconomic status and mental illness is cyclical, where having a mental illness increases the risk for poverty and low socioeconomic status increases the likelihood of developing a mental illness. People with schizophrenia are four times more likely to be unemployed or underemployed as compared to those without the illness.