Amy Degnan

Development, validation and cultural-adaptation of the knowledge about psychosis questionnaire for African-Caribbean people in the UK

The absence of assessment tools incorporating different cultural models of mental illness is a major barrier to recruiting ethnic minorities into clinical trials, reducing generalisability of findings and potentially increasing disparities in access to evidence-based care. This study aimed to develop and validate a new Knowledge about Psychosis (KAP) self-report measure and a culturally-adapted version for African-Caribbean people (CaKAP). Content and face validity were achieved through consultations with experts in psychosis and a focus group with service users, carers, and community members. Eighty-seven predominantly White British participants and 79 African-Caribbean participants completed the knowledge questionnaires (KAP and CaKAP) and measures of help-seeking and stigma. Overall, the measures showed good internal consistency and test re-test reliability. Construct validity was evidenced via significant positive associations between knowledge about psychosis and help-seeking and significant negative associations between knowledge and stigma. These measures could improve the delivery of psychosocial interventions and outcome measurement in research trials.

The Current Status of Culturally Adapted Mental Health Interventions : A Practice-Focused Review of Meta-analyses

In recent years, there has been a steadily increasing recognition of the need to improve the cultural competence of services and cultural adaptation of interventions so that every individual can benefit from evidence-based care. There have been attempts at culturally adapting evidence-based interventions for mental health problems, and a few meta-analyses have been published in this area. This is, however, a much debated subject. Furthermore, there is a lack of a comprehensive review of meta-analyses and literature reviews that provide guidance to policy makers and clinicians. This review summarizes the current meta-analysis literature on culturally adapted interventions for mental health disorders to provide a succinct account of the current state of knowledge in this area, limitations, and guidance for the future research.