Cultural Perspective and Spiritual Meaning: 

Shaping Helping Interventions

Friday, June 14, 2013 | 2:30 – 5:00 pm at MSPP

We are taught universal guidelines for mental health, mental illness, and helping interventions.  But these vary by cultural perspective and spiritual meanings.  Our society may be considered more a tossed salad than a melting pot.  The golden rule is superseded by the platinum rule:  Do unto others as they would have you do unto them.  It is timely to review the perspectives and meanings of community groups to help prepare us to understand and help appropriately.  This makes for more effective mental health promotion and illness intervention.  Our panel of speakers addresses examples of important community populations—Irish Catholics, Hispanics, and Muslims—from which we may generalize how mental health resources can respectfully engage and support all groups meaningfully.

Speakers

Khawla Abu-Baker, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Emek Yezreel Acadmic College, and NAS: Center for Gender and Arab Society Studies, Al-Qasimi Academic College, Israel

Mari Carmen Bennasar, Psy.D., Associate Director of Field Education for the Clinical Psy.D. Department at the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology

John McDargh, Ph.D., Associate Professor of the Psychology of Religious Development, Boston College Department of Theology; Director of the Center for Psychotherapy and Spirituality and Adjunct Professor, Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology

Moderator

David G. Satin, MD, DLFAPA, Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School; Chairman, Erich Lindemann Memorial Lecture Committee