[Symposium 99] (De)constructing the cultural other: professional responses to cultural diversity in mental healthcare interactions

[SY-99-01] Psychotherapists’ Discursive Constructions of Culture and Cultural Conversations in Therapy

*Hilde Depauw (Universiteit Gent(Belgium))

Keywords:

Critical Discursive Psychology,Cultural Conversations,Psychotherapists

The discrepancy between cultural diversity presented in clinical psychology education versus practice is pronounced, leading to therapists drawing on intuition and wider societal ideologies rather than professional training to confront the question of how to attend to cultural diversity in psychotherapy. This study unravels how psychotherapists deal with the dilemma of how to address and interpret ‘culture’ in their practice. Drawing on a critical social–psychological framework for discourse analysis, we analysed 31 semi-structured interviews with psychotherapists in Flanders, Belgium, and present the discursive patterns they articulated on cultural conversations. Therapists construct the importance of cultural conversations and position themselves while perpetuating wider societal discourse on cultural diversity in their clinical practice, relying on five different repertoires: an action hesitancy repertoire, an experience as expertise repertoire, a paternalistic repertoire, a self-evident repertoire and a de-culturalisation repertoire. Each repertoire has specific strengths and pitfalls for effective therapy with minoritised clients. As therapists are primary authorities in diagnosis and treatment, their practices greatly impact care quality and have the potential to either uphold or challenge existing disparities in mental healthcare.