Cultural Issues in the Assessment of Anxiety Disorders

Abstract

Notes that mental health professionals are increasingly called on to provide culturally relevant services to diverse groups. In the 21st century, ethnic and cultural groups will continue to travel and intermingle in an unprecedented manner, complicating the task of assessment and treatment for mental health clinicians. Much of the research on developing assessment instruments for anxiety has been performed by North American researchers. Even with empirically validated assessment tools, the assumption has been that anxiety is experienced and communicated to others in similar ways across the world. However, as L. J. Kirmayer (1997) and other cross-cultural researchers have noted, developments in emotion theory highlight the place of culture in the emotional and expressive experience of anxiety. Whereas cross-cultural epidemiological surveys (E. Horwath & M. M. Weissman, 1997; M. M. Weissman et al, 1997) have found very similar rates of anxiety disorders across cultures, there appear to be variations in how anxiety symptoms are described and experienced across the world. This chapter briefly reviews some of the issues that culture and ethnicity pose in the assessment of anxiety, and discusses the implications of these issues for clinical practice in ethnically diverse societies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)