How do we standardized the diagnosis and treatment of mental illnesses across cultures in Asgardia?

The culture in which you receive training as a clinician often determines not only the diagnostic manual that you use when treating patients, but also specific disorders. For instance, in my country we use the DSM-V with ICD-10 codes. However the DSM-V is pretty much only used in the US, I think. Other countries rely solely on the ICD-10 or something completely different.

Some disorders are culturally bound where symptoms are observed only in one or two cultures and the disorder to which those symptoms are attributed only exist in that culture. The symptoms are real and the disorder is valid.

In other cases, cultural incompetence can result in symptoms being misdiagnosed or a pathology perceived when in reality there is no illness present. I've seen both of those things occur in my own workplace on multiple occasions.

Errors such as these can have a very real impact on a patient's professional and personal reputation or in certain legal proceedings. You might imagine this could adversely impact any Asgardian projects in which the misdiagnosed patient is involved. On a station where human resources are extremely valuable, this would be an unfortunate situation.

Ideas on how to address this issue? I imagine extensive training and cross-cultural collaboration between professionals will be part of this solution.

In my opinion, do you think that maybe an International Research Diagnostic Foundation instead? There are a few listed. Definitely training is going to be critical.

I had to Google that! Looks like a feasible idea. That would be a good way to establish a set of uniform standards and diagnostic criteria. These could then be developed into a curriculum for training/education and any practicing Asgardian clinician would be required to complete the training/education course.

Hi,

As a graduate psychologist I always ask to myself when I meet a patient from a different culture : "Does its culture change the expression of its troubles?" It helps a lot !

I think, all Asgardian's health professionals will work together on the culturals effects.