Credit: Nuestro Stories
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – or DSM – is considered one of the most seminal works with reference to the study, understanding, and diagnosing of mental health, compiled by The American Psychiatric Association.
Now, in its fifth iteration, the manual spans more than 900 pages worth of analysis on everything from anxiety, depression, feeding and eating, obsessive-compulsive, personality, and bipolar-related disorders across the wide-ranging spectrum. In its latest iteration, the manual takes a look at a new diagnosis (prolonged grief disorder) and includes a comprehensive review of the impact that discrimination and racism can have on the diagnosis, and creation, of mental disorders.
Enter Dr. Roberto Lewis Fernandez, MD.
Latino psychiatrist is making strides
Dr. Lewis-Fernandez is a professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia and the Director of the New York State Center for Excellence for Cultural Competence and Hispanic Treatment Team. His work’s primary focus is to research developing interventions in mental health practices that would assist in overcoming the myriad of disparities and obstacles faced by underserved communities, and how to explore cultural variations during initial psychiatric evaluations.
As a platform for his day-to-day work, Dr. Lewis-Fernandez is also responsible for leading the development of the Cultural Formulation Interview, a standardized method utilized to assess cultural impacts on mental health. The CFI breaks the interview into four domains:
- The cultural definition of the problem
- Cultural perceptions of cause, context, and support (including cultural identity)
- Cultural factors that affect self-coping and past help-seeking
- Cultural factors that affect current help-seeking
Read more: Octaviano Ambrosio Larrazolo Was the First Latino To Sit on the United States Senate
Utilizing those four domains, Dr. Lewis-Fernandez created the Cultural Formulation Interview as a method employed for use by the DSM-5 when looking at the kinds of impacts culture, race, ethnicity, etc. can have on mental health, the manifestation of disorders, and the ability to obtain diagnosis and treatment.
Considering the newest iteration only recently came out. Up to this point, there was no methodology to determine what kind of impacts culture can have on mental health, the breakthrough could, in theory, make great strides towards the deconstruction of cultural norms surrounding the stigma of mental health.
And it was all thanks to a Latino.
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