Cultural Competence

The Pennsylvania Office of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services (OMHSAS), through contract with the UPenn Collaborative on Community Integration, formed a workgroup to make recommendations to ensure that OMHSAS and other health providers and agencies acted to reduce disparities in outcomes between GLBTQI individuals with a mental illness and the general population. The workgroup recommendations centered around the goals of ensuring that GLBTQI individuals with a mental illness were protected from mistreatment and offered clinically competent mental health care services in welcoming environments.

This companion* resource guide provides important considerations for service providers and policy makers, including an assessment of the barriers faced by individuals in the GLBTQI community who are seeking mental health care and practical strategies to address these obstacles. The information is based on both a growing body of literature on the topic and the focus groups conducted by the authors. *A Mental Health Recovery and Community Integration Guide for GLBTQI Individuals: What You Need to Know

This presentation, delivered at the January 2009 grantee meeting describes how the Indian Health Service Prevention program has partnered with tribes and tribal organizations, federal, state and local agencies and others to develop and implement suicide prevention initiatives.

Presented at the January 2009 grantees conference, this presentation describes community based participatory research methods were used in a youth suicide on the White Mountain Apache Reservation.

This presentation was delivered at the State and Tribal Suicide Prevention Grantees Meeting, January, 2009, for the Continuing Grantee Panel on Local Evaluation, Enhanced Evaluation. It describes an evaluation of the impact of the NYSP on awareness and community readiness. NYSP is a program of NARA NW, a coalition of 8 Tribal communities and Portland State University with programming based upon traditional, spiritual and cultural beliefs,integrated with best practices.

This 2008 publication addresses the special concerns related to suicide prevention among lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth. It summarizes the current state of knowledge about suicidality in this population, and outlines twenty-one recommendations for helping to reduce suicidal behavior among LGBT youth. Includes a resource appendix and an extensive bibliography.

The mental health field is increasingly requiring evidence based practices (EBPs) in an effort to boost quality, effectiveness, and accountability in mental health care services. This resource was created to provide information to NAMI stakeholders—individuals with mental illness, families, providers, and partners—on the literature discussing EBPs, with special consideration of multicultural issues. Discusses: the basics of EBPs; history of the EBP movement; EBP challenges; cultural adaptations of EBPs; utilization of culturally specific interventions (i.e., practice-based evidence models); and policy considerations.

This toolkit is based on a model of three interconnected arches: organizational structure, engagement, and services/activities/interventions. Together, the arches provide the support to create a solid foundation for the Safe Schools/Healthy Students (SS/HS) initiative.

This brochure briefly describes: what is culture; what is cultural competence; diversity in the United States; how to incorporate cultural competency standards into practice; and an example of cultural competence in practice (a community-based intervention for elderly Chinese Americans).

Defines the term "cultural competency". Provides guidance for mental health professionals on: developing essential knowledge, skills and attributes; building counselor/client rapport; translator and interpreter challenges; connecting with families; and confidentiality issues.