Patients' Diversity Is Often Discounted; Alternatives to Mainstream Medical Treatment

[Thunderwolf, MSN, RN]

This article on mental health, although long, is quite good. It brings in the good debate regarding Western mental health diagnosis and treatment WITHOUT cultural considerations....a knowledge base ignored....at the detriment of the patient. I include it here because it is relevant when applied to NAI people.

A very small portion of the article:

When UCLA researchers reviewed the best available studies of psychiatric drugs for depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and attention deficit disorder, they found that the trials had involved 9,327 patients over the years. When the team looked to see how many patients were Native Americans, the answer was . . .

Zero.

"I don't know of a single trial in the last 10 to 15 years that has been published regarding the efficacy of a pharmacological agent in treating a serious mental disorder in American Indians," said Spero Manson, a psychiatrist who heads the American Indian and Alaska Native Programs at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Aurora. "It is stunning."

The full article can be viewed here: http://vedantam.com/culture1-06-2005.html