One of the greatest challenges in the field of cultural psychiatry over the past two decades—since the Outline for Cultural Formulation was published in DSM-IV—has been the need to develop a clinically effective set of questions that mental health practitioners could use to reliably describe the cultural context of psychological distress and psychiatric symptoms. This volume, the product of a DSM-5 work group dedicated to this challenge since 2007, comprises a major step forward. It includes a core, 16-item Cultural Formulation Interview, along with 12 supplementary modules on subjects such as the patient-clinician relationship, immigrants and refugees, children and adolescents, and caregivers. Its widespread use by clinicians and students should lead to more sensitive interactions with patients and their families in diverse and multicultural settings, as well as to more effective, person-centered clinical care." - Ronald Wintrob, M.D., Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, Warren Alpert School of Medicine, Brown University"This companion piece to the Cultural Formulation Interview (CFI), which had its debut in the DSM-5, provides a high level overview of the CFI and its supplementary modules as well as a wonderfully practical guide for their implementation in clinical practice. The editors, a team of expert cultural psychiatrists led by Roberto Lewis-Fernandez, have assembled chapters that in aggregate, illuminate the principles of serious engagement with ‘culture’ as a means of re-contextualizing the lived experience of mental illness. The handbook highlights the clinical utility of the CFI for diagnostic assessment and as a tool for rendering treatment optimally relevant and acceptable to any patient. Within the CFI approach, culture is recast as not exotica or mere descriptor, but rather as fluid, dynamic, multi-dimensional, and intrinsic to patient understandings, values, and needs that, in turn, invariably shape the arc of treatment seeking and illness. This comprehensive overview of the CFI—and all that this approach entails—is an invaluable guide to navigating culture in the clinical encounter." - Anne E. Becker, M.D., PhD., Vice Chair and Maude and Lillian Presley Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine, Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School
