The Transcultural Psychiatry Reading Group: a Learner-Led Approach to Cultural Psychiatry.

Abstract

A number of North American psychiatry residency training programs have developed cross-cultural curricula with the hope of producing psychiatrists who are self-reflective, sensitive to cross-cultural issues, and respectful of divergent perspectives. Many programs have introduced this challenging subject matter either as part of the mandatory curriculum [1] or as electives [2]. Some curricula have focused on a particular aspect of culture, such as religion or spirituality [3]. Other curricula have adopted a broad definition of culture in attempts to examine psychiatry’s own professional culture with the view to better understand how we as psychiatrists interact with diverse populations [4]. This article will examine one particular approach to fostering cross-cultural competency, sensitivity, and critical mindedness: an extracurricular residents’ transcultural psychiatry reading group. In 2008, psychiatry residents from the University of Toronto established the Transcultural Psychiatry Reading Group with the aim of fulfilling a need for interdisciplinary discourse on psychiatry and culture. The residency already had a largely didactic, longitudinal cultural psychiatry curriculum. Our group was formed to offer a more discussion-based opportunity for cultural learning. The residents shared a desire to reflect on the assumptions, philosophy, and practice of psychiatry. By creating a group that was also open to clinicians and scholars outside of psychiatry and medicine, members hoped to create a dedicated time and space to engage fully, freely, and collaboratively in critical readings and discussions. In this context, current diagnostic classification systems and treatment approaches could be openly discussed as culturally informed practices that reflect societal ideals, values, and norms within a specific historical time and place. The analysis here, drawing on our insights as members, as well as information from participant surveys, will describe the group process and provide an illustrative case in order to demonstrate one model of a learner-led initiative that may be adapted by psychiatry residents in other locations.