Working Therapeutically with Interpreters in Mental Health: A Curriculum for Clinicians.

Given the increasing numbers of people who lack proficiency in spoken English, it would not be uncommon for American healthcare practitioners to encounter clients whose primary language is not English. Additionally, for those clinicians who specifically wish to work with immigrants, refugees or asylees, it is likely that their clientele will be comprised of LEP individuals and families. While many professional interpreters have completed formal training and been certified to provide their unique services, mental health clinicians rarely receive such training to help negotiate the complex dynamics inherent in working with LEP populations where the therapeutic relationship is altered with the addition of an interpreter. This training curriculum proposes the detailed, in-depth training for clinicians as recommended by numerous sources in the literature.

Establishing Culturally Sensitive Therapeutic Communities in Ghana for Individuals with Severe and Persistent Mental Illnesses

This paper makes a proposal for the establishment of therapeutic communities for people with severe and persistent mental illnesses in Ghana. It discusses the history and features of therapeutic communities, as well as the elements that make it compatible with the agenda of the new 2012 Ghana mental health bill. This paper also discusses the present state of mental health care in this West African country and how the establishment of therapeutic communities will promote recovery of people with severe and persistent mental illness, and change the perception of chronic mental illness in Ghana. A discussion of potential modifications of the therapeutic community is offered as well as justifications for maintaining other structural aspects should this establishment materialize in Ghana. The costs of setting up therapeutic communities in this third world country are addressed with the offered conclusion that costs far outweigh the benefits. Finally, given the endeavor of the proposed therapeutic communities to assist in deinstitutionalization of care, cautions are made in this paper to ensure that the trends experienced in the United States with deinstitutionalization are not replicated in Ghana. A proposal is made in the conclusion for Ghana to move past therapeutic communities when developmentally able- to community mental health centers which were in part established to account for some of the fallouts of deinstitutionalization by providing a comprehensive and extensive range of services for people with severe and persistent mental illness.