Cross Cultural Social Psychiatry or Cross Cultural Confusion-facing the Challenge
This paper examines a Family Mental Health Service’s (FMHS) ability to offer a refugee and migrant programme. The programme, initially set up as a response to an identified need in the local community, differed significantly from other refugee services in New Zealand at that time in that it was based in a traditional mental health service. The model of care offers psychiatric consultation and therapeutic intervention. However, given the complexities of the problems this population of people face as social workers we constantly have to ask ourselves are we offering cross-cultural social psychiatry or cross cultural confusion? How do we meet the challenge of this population of people? In order to answer these questions an analysis of the first 100 referrals to the programme was undertaken. This paper presents the results of that analysis and discusses some of the key human rights and social justice issues that emerged while undertaking the evaluation.