Culture is acknowledged as a significant factor in the assessment of psychological functioning and treatment of mental disorders (American Psychiatric Association, 1994; American Psychological Association, 1993; U. S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1999). Regarding infant mental health, the Diagnostic Classification of Mental Health and Developmental Disorders of Infancy and Early Childhood(DC: 0–3; Zero to Three, 1994) states that any intervention or treatment program should include an assessment of family functioning and cultural and community patterns in addition to developmental history, symptoms, and assessment of the child's current functioning.
According to the members of the work group charged with developing the Outline for Cultural Formulation in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV; American Psychiatric Association, 1994), there that the need to under stand culture has been growing recognition that psychiatric diseases need to be understood not only as biological processes, but rather, in the context of an illness experience, which is in part determined by cultural interpretations of the disease (Good, 1996). Kleinman (1988) was one of the first authors tolatio discuss the concepts of disease and illness in this way (Castillo, 1997). By considering disease in the context of an “illness experience, ” there is an acknowledgment that the experience of disease— that is, its symptoms, its remedy, and so on—is unique to a particular individual who is situated in a particular sociocultural context.
While the inclusion of the Outline for Cultural Formulation in DSM-IV has made a significant contribution to the assessment of adult psychological functioning in the context of culture (Manson, 1995), the field of infant mental health assessment has lagged behind (Yamamoto, 1997). This is not surprising, considering the newness of the field and the fact that appreciation of cultural factors in development in general has lagged behind other approaches (Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000; Super & Harkness, 1986). It is also not surprising that the need to understand culture has come increasingly into our awareness, given the changing demographics of the U. S. population. According to the U. S. Census Bureau (2000), minority and foreign-born groups are expected to constitute increasingly large segments of the total U. S. population over the next 50 years, while the current . . .
