Families Coping With Mental Illness: The Cultural Context

Both the sociocultural context of interventions for family members with a mentally ill relative and the ethnocultural context of family experiences are covered here. Included in the first section on the sociocultural context are chapters on a training approach to encourage collaboration between families and providers and on a trauma-and-recovery model of family education and support. In part 2, on the ethnocultural context, Peter Guarnaccia presents findings from a study of conceptions of African-American, European-American, and Hispanic-American families about mental illness, interactions with the mental health system, and caregiving burdens. Other contributors compare the satisfaction of minority and white families with support groups, discuss culturally relevant practices for working with Indochinese or Native American families, and suggest generalizable clinical implications.