May 6 - 8, 2002
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Providing Culturally Competent Disability Services
to Persons Born in other Countries May 6 - 8, 2002 |
Cultural considerations in the assessment and treatment of neurobehavioral disorders
Strickland, T.
Behavioral Neuroscience Research Center, Director
Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science
Los Angeles, CA 90059 USA
tstrick@ucla.edu
Abstract
Historically, clinical practice has focused only modest attention on the significance of cultural factors in the evaluation and treatment of neurobehavioral disorders. Significantly more attention has been focused on traditional clinical issues associated with the assessment and treatment of brain pathology. Thus, methods associated with how to address cultural and ethnic variables that include the beliefs, customs, values, language and history of groups from similar ethnic backgrounds have not been syste matically integrated into the process of neurobehavioral evaluation and treatment. Providing culturally competent services to facilitate accurate cross-cultural evaluations of neurobehavioral disorders has become increasingly clinically relevant. This pre sentation will address the importance of cultural factors in the assessment, rehabilitation and pharmacotherapy of neurobehavioral disorders. The presenter will speak to issues related to evaluation and treatment of underrepresented minority populations w ith brain injury, and examine the influence of migration, special needs of the elderly, and ethnobiologic variations in pharmacotherapy.