About the lecture

In this lecture, we think about cultural impacts on mental health diagnoses, focusing in particular on: (i) four key ways in which culture can impact mental health being stigma, understanding of symptoms, community support and available resources; (ii) cultural stigma around mental illness being associated with weakness being a potential factor in individuals choosing not to seek help; (iii) a lack of understanding of symptoms of mental health being another factor which could limit potential for seeking help; (iv) the presence or absence of community support affecting the likelihood that an individual will seek help for mental health problems; (v) resources, specifically the opportunity to access a service which can provide help, as an additional cultural-related factor affecting the likelihood that an individual will seek help with mental health problems; (vi) Cinnirella and Loewenthal’s 1999 study of religious and ethnic group influences on beliefs about mental illness; (vii) Luhrmann and colleagues’ 2015 study, which investigated the treatment of hearing voices across cultures.

About the lecturer

Dr Cody Porter is a senior lecturer in social psychology in the department of Health and Social Sciences at the University of the West of England. Dr Porter’s research interests are in information elicitation, lie detection and offending behaviour. Some of Dr Porter’s recent publications include ‘Implementing converged security risk management: Drivers, barriers, and facilitators’ (in press) and ‘Applying the asymmetric information management technique to insurance claims’ (2022).