Revue internationale de psychologie scolaire et cognitive
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Abstrait

Perceptives on Cross-Lingual Communication in Psychiatry

NaimWaheed

WHO has established that mental illness is globally on the rise. In the Middle East in particular, the population may be at an even higher risk, not least due to the predominance of contemporary issues of a contentious nature and international scale. With psychiatrists still in shortage, medical education and training has a foremost role to play in attending to this problem. It is significant that medical education in the region is largely conducted in English, especially in the context of psychiatry where patient assessment is almost entirely qualitative and dependent on patient-doctor communication. In this study, we will assess the interplay between language and communication as reflected in the patient-doctor interaction, in a population of medical students who are in the singular position of learning psychiatry in English, but communicating with patients in their native tongue, namely Arabic. We will address the characteristics of medical students’ adaptation of psychiatric vernacular into Arabic, the extent to which it is influenced by preconceived notions of mental illness, and the level to which they are attuned to a prominent background issue: the enduring stigma faced by patients with psychiatric illness.