Cultural Context Of Grief

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Although the core features of grief, for example, longing and yearning for a loved one may be universal, the cultural context of grief should be considered when developing treatments for PGD (see chapter 5). There are important differences in symptoms and the experience of grief across cultures (Rosenblatt, 2008) and different cultures will have different resources and philosophies for treatment. 75% of global cost of the disease burden for mental health disorders is located in low- to middle- income countries (LMIC) where the Western approach to treatment of mental disorders is sparse due to lack of resources or unfamiliarity (Reed, 2010). As Aggarwal et al., (2014) demonstrated, cultural mismatch or differences in understanding of illness …show more content…
This may be particularly important for a disorder such as PGD that is uniquely defined by the loss of a personal connection within a social context (e.g. loss of partner, friend, child) (Stroebe & Schut, 1999). There has been a recent surge of research in Asian countries documenting and exploring the symptomatology of grief (i.e. Cambodia (Stammel et al., 2013), China (Xiu et al., 2016), Japan (Tsutsui et al., 2014), and South Korea (Han et al., 2016)). These studies find high prevalence rates of PGD and call for better understanding of grief and treatment options for these …show more content…
The cultural context may significantly influence mental health care in terms of 1) interpretation of health information, 2) exposure to risk, and 3) the context of normality, (e.g. the shared understanding of what constitutes symptoms of normal vs. abnormal grief responses) (Brooks et al., 2013).
Cultural adaptation is defined as ‘the systematic modification of an evidence-based treatment or intervention protocol to consider language, culture and context in such a way that it is compatible with the client’s cultural patterns meanings and values’ (Castro et al., 2010). Systematic reviews and meta-analysis have confirmed that the more sensitive the cultural adaptation the better the outcomes of the intervention (Harper Shehadeh et al., 2016). Indeed, there are several models and evidence-based frameworks for how to conduct an effective cultural adaptation (Barrera & Castro, 2006; Bernal et al., 2009; Bolton et al., 2014) and many best practice protocols now call for important cultural considerations when developing interventions (Zayfert, 2008; Hinton, 2013). Until now there have been only a handful of grief-related interventions adapted for use in different cultures and they have used very different approaches. Some are cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)-based interventions (Murray et al., 2000; Schulz et al., 2006) that separate the effect of cognitive and behavioral
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