About the Book
Clinicians will, of course, find the DSM-5 Handbook of the Cultural Formulation Interview indispensable, but administrators, policy makers, advocates, and other practitioners who work collaboratively to engage patients in the mental health care process will also value its clarity and comprehensiveness.
About the Author :
Roberto Lewis-Fernández, M.D., M.T.S., is a Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center and is the Director of the New York State Center of Excellence for Cultural Competence and of the Hispanic Treatment Program at the New York State Psychiatry Institute, New York, New York.
Neil Krishan Aggarwal, M.D., M.B.A., M.A., is Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Columbia University and Research Scientist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York, New York
Ladson Hinton, M.D., is a Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California Davis School of Medicine, Sacramento, California
Devon E. Hinton M.D., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts
Laurence J. Kirmayer, M.D., is James McGill Professor and Director of the Division if Social and Transcultural Psychiatry at McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Review :
One of the greatest challenges in the field of cultural psychiatry over the past two decades—since the Outline for Cultural Formulation was published in DSM-IV—has been the need to develop a clinically effective set of questions that mental health practitioners could use to reliably describe the cultural context of psychological distress and psychiatric symptoms. This volume, the product of a DSM-5 work group dedicated to this challenge since 2007, comprises a major step forward. It includes a core, 16-item Cultural Formulation Interview, along with 12 supplementary modules on subjects such as the patient-clinician relationship, immigrants and refugees, children and adolescents, and caregivers. Its widespread use by clinicians and students should lead to more sensitive interactions with patients and their families in diverse and multicultural settings, as well as to more effective, person-centered clinical care." - Ronald Wintrob, M.D., Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, Warren Alpert School of Medicine, Brown University
"This companion piece to the Cultural Formulation Interview (CFI), which had its debut in the DSM-5, provides a high level overview of the CFI and its supplementary modules as well as a wonderfully practical guide for their implementation in clinical practice. The editors, a team of expert cultural psychiatrists led by Roberto Lewis-Fernandez, have assembled chapters that in aggregate, illuminate the principles of serious engagement with ‘culture’ as a means of re-contextualizing the lived experience of mental illness. The handbook highlights the clinical utility of the CFI for diagnostic assessment and as a tool for rendering treatment optimally relevant and acceptable to any patient. Within the CFI approach, culture is recast as not exotica or mere descriptor, but rather as fluid, dynamic, multi-dimensional, and intrinsic to patient understandings, values, and needs that, in turn, invariably shape the arc of treatment seeking and illness. This comprehensive overview of the CFI—and all that this approach entails—is an invaluable guide to navigating culture in the clinical encounter." - Anne E. Becker, M.D., PhD., Vice Chair and Maude and Lillian Presley Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine, Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School
