Tag: refugee

Culture bias within Psychology

Cultural Bias exists when ideas from one culture (often westernised) are used to evaluate the same phenomena within another culture (eastern/tribal communities). It’s a recognised problem in psychology since Binet & Simons (1916/1973) intelligence tests, which overestimated/underestimated people’s abilities, sometimes disadvantaging people. Psychology has moved forward with its ecological understanding, years need to be invested learning the language, culture and motivation of natives in different parts of the world. In doing so, psychological cross-cultural studies can be justified as ecologically valid (Levinson 2012).

Item bias occurs when words have different meanings across cultures. This occurs either in translation, when words are unknown or have ambiguous meanings (Van de Vijer & Leung, 1997). Ekman (1972) conducted research into the universality of facial expressions in Papua New Guinea. From investing time in the culture, he realised there was no local word for ‘disgust’, and therefore adapted question items. Without spending time and researching into the culture, participants would be confused and seem to not recognise ‘disgust’, when really their knowledge would’ve been overestimated. Likewise, if a similar word does exist, the translation could be incorrect (Barger, Nabi, & Hong, 2010); for example, “distress” can be translated to “I feel blue” which isn’t an accurate translation (Shimazu, Bin Nordin, Dollard, & Oakman 2014), and causes translation back translation issues.

With increased understanding to avoid item bias, there is no excuse for cross-cultural research to not pay time and attention to ensuring translation is accurate and understood in new research culture. Research into other cultures is increasing in importance with the surge of refugees coming into Europe with mental health issues that shouldn’t be assessed as a western view.

References:

Binet, A., & Simon, T. (1973). The development of intelligence in children. New York, NY: Arno. (Original work published 1916)

Barger, B., Nabi, R., & Hong, L. Y. (2010). Standard back-translation procedures may not capture proper emotion concepts: A case study of Chinese disgust terms. Emotion, 10, 703-711.

Ekman, P. (1972). Universal and cultural differences in facial expressions of emotion. In J. R. Cole (Ed.), Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, 1971: Vol. 19 (pp. 207- 283). Lincoln, NE: Nebraska University Press

Levinson, S. (2012). The Original Sin of Cognitive Science. Topics In Cognitive Science, 4(3), 396-403. doi: 10.1111/j.1756-8765.2012.01195.x

Shimazu, A., Bin Nordin, R., Dollard, M., & Oakman, J. (2014). Psychosocial Factors at Work in the Asia Pacific. New York: Springer.

Van de Vijver, F. J. R., & Leung, K. (1997). Cross-cultural psychology series, Vol. 1. Methods and data analysis for cross-cultural research. Thousand Oaks, CA, US: Sage Publications, Inc.

 

 

Appropriateness of Clinical Methods used to treat the Mental Health of Refugees within Europe

When you say “Psychology”, the first image that probably springs to mind are of WEIRD men in plush flats across America; you undoubtedly see Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich and Democratic men, which in 2018, doesn’t represent our diverse world. Similarly, the clinical method for treating depression is biased to westernised cultures; it utilises clinical based approaches, when research shows community based approaches would better suit populations such as refugees (Stovall, 2005).

The rise in depression in westernised cultures is often pinned to social media usage and higher income (Mentzakis & Moro, 2009; Lin et al. 2016). But for the 92,196 refugees who sought asylum into Europe from Africa and Asia in 2018 (so far) (UNHC, 2018), their reasoning for developing depression is diverse. Refugees display high rates of depression for grief, violence, torture and forced migration (Munz & Melcop 2018), but even with this recognised, research in this population is sparse (Kokou-Kpolou, Mbassa Menick, Moukouta, Baugnet, & Kpelly, 2017).

Consequently, I think it’s important for more exploration in under researched and economically undeveloped populations, like; Africaan’s and Syrian’s. This allows clinicians to enhance understanding of stressors refugees experience, to avoid treating them in a clinical way developed for westernised cultures, which ignores cross-cultural differences, ecological and sociocultural variables. Participant observation methodologies would be beneficial as this would allow a more indigenous psychological perspective, whereby each culture would be understood within its own context, drawn from being immersed in the target culture rather than being squeezed to fit the westernised mould.

References:

Kokou-Kpolou, K., Mbassa Menick, D., Moukouta, C. S., Baugnet, L., & Kpelly, D. E. (2017). A cross-cultural approach to complicated grief reactions among Togo–Western African immigrants in Europe. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 48(8), 1247–1262. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022022117721972

Lin, L. yi, Sidani, J. E., Shensa, A., Radovic, A., Miller, E., Colditz, J. B., … Primack, B. A. (2016). Association between social media use and depression among US young adults. Depression and Anxiety, 33(4), 323–331. https://doi.org/10.1002/da.22466

Mentzakis, E., & Moro, M. (2009). The poor, the rich and the happy: Exploring the link between income and subjective well-being. The Journal of Socio-Economics, 38(1), 147–158. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socec.2008.07.010

Munz, D., & Melcop, N. (2018). The psychotherapeutic care of refugees in Europe: Treatment needs, delivery reality and recommendations for action. European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 9(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/20008198.2018.1476436

Stovall, J. (2005). The Mental Health of Refugees: Ecological Approaches to Healing and Adaptation. Psychiatric Services, 56(6), 765-765. doi: 10.1176/appi.ps.56.6.765

UNHC, (2018, October 15) Mediterranean SituationRetrieved from http://data2.unhcr.org/en/situations/mediterranean