Mind your language: working with interpreters in healthcare settings and therapeutic encounters

Abstract

The National Health Service and specialist agencies within the UK are striving to ensure that they offer services that are inclusive, accessible and appropriate to all users seeking their services. As such, language interpreters will be required to work alongside health professionals to ensure that service users who are not fluent in the English language can gain full access to health and therapeutic provisions. In addition to reasons of governance, equity of service provision and national legislation there are also sound clinical practice reasons with respect to facilitating work with interpreters. Language is not merely a neutral, descriptive medium but has an active role in shaping and constructing how people view and experience the world. The range of meaning-making possibilities that lay or professional language opens up is always already greatly indebted to the speaker's local culture and has particular relevance in the therapeutic encounter. Working with an interpreter can be a challenging but enriching experience. The benefits of working in close partnership with an interpreter are discussed both at generic level when working as a therapist/clinician in any adult mental health setting and, more specifically, when working with sex and relationships problems using clinical material as illustrations.

Keywords:

• access
• interpreter
• mental health
• best practice
• sex and couple therapy

Notes

1. There are three National Deaf Services for England and Wales: (1) Old Church, Balham, London, (2) Denmark House, Queen Elizabeth Psychiatric Hospital, Birmingham and (3) John Denmark Unit, Prestwich Hospital, Bury, Manchester. For more information on working with deaf people in a mental health setting see the NIMHE report: Mental health and deafness, towards equality and access (2005), available at http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsandstatistics/Pressreleases/DH_4104006. The RNID can also offer support in finding an English language interpreter for deaf people and they can be found at http://www.rnid.org.uk, telephone: [phone], Email: [email protected]. For more information on working with interpreters in British Sign Language see http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:G1iKfmvdc9UJ:www.aucc.uk.com/journal_pdf/aucc_summer_3.pdf+deaf+interpreters+in+the+mental+health+setting&hl=en

2. Suggestions about training within a mental health context and a possible curriculum for such training can be found in Tribe and Ravel (2003, pp. 54–69).

3. Suggestions about the specific dilemmas of working with an interpreter in the context of relationship and sexual problems are discussed here, the interested reader is referred for detailed good practice guidelines on working with interpreters in a “mental health” or therapeutic context to Tribe and Lane (2008) or to the Good Practice Guidelines written for psychologists working in health settings to be found from Autumn (2008) on the British Psychological Society website: www.bps.org.uk

4. The two case studies presented here are based on real cases but in order to ensure clients' anonymity all personal details have been removed and particularities such as gender, presenting problems, place of origin have been changed.