Sociocultural Issues in Psychiatry

Nhi-Ha Trinh, MD, MPH, serves as the Director for the MGH Department of Psychiatry Center for Diversity as well as the Director of Multicultural Studies and the Director of Clinical Services at the MGH Depression Clinical and Research Program. As Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Associate Director, HMS Holmes Society, she is committed to medical student and psychiatry resident education and mentorship. Her academic work focuses on Sociocultural issues in psychiatry and she shares her passion for this topic as course Co-Director of the MGH/McLean Residency Sociocultural Curriculum.Dr. Trinh earned her medical degree at the University of California, San Francisco, and her Master of Public Health at the University of California at Berkeley, specializing in Epidemiology. She completed residency training in Adult Psychiatry at the Mass General/McLean Adult Psychiatry Training Program and a fellowship in Geriatric Psychiatry at McLean Hospital.Justin A. Chen, MD, MPH, is Medical Director of Ambulatory Psychiatry and Co-Director of Primary Care Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital. His interests include cross-cultural psychiatry, stigma, racial/ethnic disparities in mental health service utilization, and medical education. He has regularly chaired symposia related to these topics at annual meetings of the American Psychiatric Association and the Society for the Study of Psychiatry and Culture.He is dedicated to teaching and mentorship, serving as Associate Director of Medical Student Education in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, as a Training Mentor and Co-Director of the longitudinal Sociocultural Psychiatry curriculum for MGH/McLean psychiatry residents, and as an Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School. As Executive Director and Co-Founder of the MGH Center for Cross-Cultural Student Emotional Wellness, a nonprofit consortium of clinicians, educators and researchers, he delivers talks and trainings for families, clinicians, and educators throughout the United States on promoting the emotional health and psychological resilience of diverse student populations.Dr. Chen received his undergraduate and medical degrees from Yale University. He completed his residency in adult psychiatry at MGH/McLean followed by a Master of Public Health degree in Clinical Effectiveness at the Harvard-T.H. Chan School of Public Health and a Dupont-Warren Research Fellowship focused on improving engagement of depressed Chinese immigrants into mental health care at South Cove Community Health Center.

This is a high-quality book that discusses a topic that is underrepresented in mental healthcare. To my knowledge, there are few books that provide a comprehensive review of sociocultural issues in mental health. The best aspects of this book stem from the fact that it is written by experts in the field. The flow of the chapters is intuitive and linear, which makes the book easy to follow. The use of extensive references and resources makes it easy to access further reading.

• Foreword 1. Introduction to Sociocultural Psychiatry 2. Culture as a Multidimensional Construct 3. Culture in the DSM-5 4. Global Psychiatric Epidemiology 5. Social Determinants of Psychiatric Illness 6. Psychiatry and Its Checkered Past: Perspectives on Current Practice 7. Minority Stress Theory and Internalized Prejudice: Links to Clinical Psychiatric Practice 8. Identifying and Working with Diverse Explanatory Models of Mental illness 9. Religion and Spirituality in Psychiatric Care: An Experiential Seminar Model Addressing Barriers to Discussing Religion and Spirituality 10. Gender and Sexuality: Shame and Safety in the Psychiatric Encounter 11. Implicit Bias in Mental Health Care 12. Responding to Patients' Provider Preferences 13. Navigating Cultural Challenges in Patient-Clinician Dyads 14. Teaching Sociocultural Psychiatry Throughout the Lifespan