West meets east: cross-cultural issues in inpatient treatment

Abstract

The authors analyze the role of culture and its influence on the inpatient psychiatric treatment setting through an examination of the contrasting beliefs and assumptions of the Euro-American and Arabic-Islamic traditions. Three case vignettes illustrate the form and impact of these contrasts on various aspects of the cross-cultural encounter when Arab patients are treated in a Western psychodynamically informed hospital setting. The impact of the culture of origin on both treaters and patients is examined. These observations can also be extrapolated to other significant cross-cultural encounters within the hospital setting. Cultural differences may contribute to either a mismatch of expectations or to a creative accommodation of them on the part of both patients and treaters.