Can cultural differences influence PTSD treatment?
Around 12 per cent of Australians will experience Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in their lifetime, with one of the leading causes being serious accidents1.
People with PTSD often experience feelings of panic or extreme fear, similar to the fear they felt during the traumatic event. Psychological treatments have been shown to work, but with people being so different, through different backgrounds and experiences, how do we decipher what will work best?
In a recent study, MICCN PhD student Jessica Bernardi and team discovered that culture has an impact on the cognitive appraisals that are central to the development, maintenance, and treatment of PTSD. In particular, the cultural differences related to self-understanding influence how individuals appraise experiences in terms of agency, control, mental defeat, and negative independent appraisals of self – appraisals all central to PTSD.
The team used their knowledge of how culture affects the way in which an individual cognitively appraises an everyday experience to discover how culture may also impact on the cognitive appraisals central to PTSD, leading to this important discovery.
“We initially reviewed the role of appraisals in the prominent cognitive models of PTSD, and then discussed the cross-culture psychology literature on the influence of culture on appraisals, “Ms Bernardi said. “We were then able to consider the impact of culture on trauma-related appraisals and associated clinical implications, which meant that we could then consider implications for the tailoring of clinical treatment for individuals from diverse cultural backgrounds.
“Empirical work is now needed in order to investigate the influence of culture on trauma-related appraisals in the context of PTSD in order to improve theoretical models and clinical approaches.”
The full research paper can be found here.
1 Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2008). National Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing
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