Influence Of Culture On African American Culture

What is culture and does it pays an important part in psychology? How does culture in psychology affect the African American community when it comes to dialog between doctor and patient and how this affects the relationship and diagnosis with the client? These are the question that I have to ask the viewer. Culture is the define knowledge and characteristics of a group of people that makes them who they are as a community. In my view I feel that a psychologist should understand the culture of someone that they are treating to help them better. Culture can be miscommunicated between the doctor and the patient ultimately resulting in misdiagnosis and resistant from the client. Every psychologist should strive to become culture competent which
Psychologist should understand the African community before taking on the case because if a doctor without understanding try to diagnosis an individual especially a person of an African American culture base on the description in the DSM text, the doctor can easily misdiagnosis an individual. Culture is a very important part in dialog with a client who has a different background than the doctor who is evaluating them as stated in the article “Issues in the Psychiatric Treatment of African Americans” for example “Clinicians who evaluate African-American patients should be prepared to question old diagnoses, such as a diagnosis of schizophrenia made 20 years prior. If previous evaluating clinicians did not explore the substance abuse history of the black patient, the role of alcohol in the genesis of symptoms may have been missed. Alternatively, symptoms of hypomania may have been ignored due to the diagnostic bias of the clinician, resulting in a diagnosis of schizophrenia rather than the correct diagnosis of bipolar disorder” (F.M.Baker,
I have to agree with Dr.Akbar when he said that “African Americans have been the victims of oppression through mental health by assessments and judgement” (Akabar, 2004). I know that the DSM is made up by old white men for as long as the DSM have been published and the DSM was publish to justified Scientific Racism against African Americans to try and oppress the people of African Descent, which was some of the foundation for African American and their distrust for Psychologist. .So in my defense if the DSM text is what is followed to treat a client with African American culture then it will consist of oppression of he/she mental comprehension. As an African American studying psychology I know that the DSM is made up by old white men for as long as the DSM has been published. In Dr.Akabar book “Paper in African Psychology” he talks about how the understanding of oppression of African people will help with treatment because to understand why we correspond in society, it has been proving that African American psychologist with African American clients tends to have a more comfortable relationship then a doctor with a different culture. Dr. David T. Goode-Cross did a study on black therapist and their inter action with their black clients and he stated that “this interpretative phenomenological analysis suggest these therapists most