Issues surrounding diagnosis, assessment and treatment.
2018: Intercultural care and support
This section explores issues surrounding timely and accurate diagnosis. After an initial reflection about why and in what way timely and accurate diagnosis is a specific issue for people with dementia from minority ethnic groups, we consider some of the key barriers to such diagnosis, paying particular attention to the need for culturally appropriate assessment and diagnostic tools. This includes a description of some of the available tools and an overview of the key challenges to assessment and diagnosis such as language difficulties, limited or no education and problems with interpretation. There are, of course, numerous people from minority ethnic groups who are literate, proficient in the language used by the majority ethnic group, familiar with the principles of testing and highly educated. However, the concerns and issues addressed in this section focus on those who are not and for whom culturally inappropriate and insensitive procedures and tools may result in inadequate assessment and diagnosis. The section ends with a discussion about possible inequalities in access to and use of treatment by people from minority ethnic groups.
Last Updated: Monday 08 April 2019