61st Annual Meeting

October 18 - 25, 2014

Clinical Case Conference 9 (open)

For Better or Worse: How Culture and Religion Can Shape Pediatric Cancer Care

The complex process of evaluation and provision of mental health treatment of a child or adolescent exponentially increases for children where diverse ethnicity or spiritual factors are involved. The practicing child and adolescent psychiatrist must recognize these factors and become expert in integrating them into the case formulation in order to provide appropriate care. The AACAP Practice Parameters for Cultural Competence and the DSM-5 Cultural Formulation Interview serve as a framework to develop a cultural formulation for the case of a 10-year-old immigrated Arab Muslim. Relevant psychiatric literature regarding work with immigrant children and their families, and cultural aspects of clinical work with Muslim youth of different ethnicities is presented; and features of a spiritual assessment are presented.