Culturally Diverse Forensic Population Selected for the Research
The Australian culturally diverse population is chosen for this review. Diversity in the population arises due to a significant percentage of the population being born outside the country, as immigrants and refugees. These populations create a multicultural context that presents different influences to forensic treatment.
Australia also has a high level of reluctance among many culturally diverse people when it comes to attendance to hospital and community-based mental health services within the country. This does not imply that there is a low demand for the services, but points to difficulties in understanding and coordinating the available services (Gunn & Taylor, 2014).
Summary of Research Article
The article examines the problems encountered in generalizing findings from culturally diverse populations. It looks at the utilization of violence risk instruments in forensic population and explores how the subject and issues with generalizability appear in the Aboriginal Australians population.
The research gathers violence risk makers that are common in the Aboriginal Australian offenders. It compares the makers with non-Aboriginal offenders and considers the social and historical contexts. It also uses the violence risk instruments as the basis of reviewing studies on cohorts of Aboriginal Australians (Shepherd et al., 2014).
Explanation of How the Role of Culture is addressed
The article identifies the impact of transitioning from traditional environments to new ones that have different social values and beliefs as a contribution to acculturative stress. In addition, the acculturative stress leads to social distress, crime, and suicide among the studied population, often manifesting in a psychological state.
The research discusses cultural competency in risk assessment and points out that under-diagnosis in post-traumatic stress disorder or other mental health issues arise because of a potential cultural bias. Favoring monoculturalism and lack of an understanding of the culture of the Aboriginal population adds to the trans-generational impacts of colonization, which collectively affect Aboriginal children.
Role of Culture in the Treatment of Forensic Populations
The research identifies the continual experience of individual and systematic racism that affects Aboriginal people when they are utilizing human service agencies and calls for understanding of the client family background, cultural explanation of illnesses, and the cultural elements of the client. Recognizing these factors leads to a better practitioner relationship that provides insight into own positioning (Shepherd et al., 2014).
Challenges Expected when Working with Clients from the Population and a Proposal for Addressing the Challenge
It is easy to see unique manifestation of mental health as culturally bound syndromes and fail to capture other attributes of the problem. Such diagnosis opens up possibilities for stereotypical treatment. Stigma and lack of information about mental illnesses among the aboriginals can impede efforts to address the problem and cause the practitioner to refer to monoculture contexts that are erroneous.
The solution to the challenges is to observe all violence risk factors among the Aboriginals in the context of risk assessment. In addition, practitioners should not just consider the overrepresentation of aboriginal offenders across a range of factors as proof of the high prevalence of violence. Some solutions to the overgeneralization could be to have separate research dealing with criminogenic needs for violence and modulating the influence of violence and treatment responsively in regards to the analysis of risk factors.
Before going ahead to rely on historical data, it is important to consider the potential of misdiagnosis or possible over-classification as a cautionary step towards future exploration when treating culturally diverse populations (Kirmayer, Rousseau, & Lashley, 2007). Another solution is to offer treatment in a family context because families play a significant role in the culturally diverse communities.
References
Gunn, J., & Taylor, P. (2014). Forensic psychiatry: Clinical, legal and ethical issues, (2nd ed.). Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.
Kirmayer, L. J., Rousseau, C., & Lashley, M. (2007). The place of culture in forensic psychiatry. Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, 35(1), 98-102.
Shepherd, S. M., Adams, Y., Mcentyre, E., & Walker, R. L. (2014). Violence risk assessment in Australian Aboriginal offender populations: A review of the literature. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 20(3), 281-293.