Investigating language barriers in psychiatric care in Ghana

ABSTRACT

Background: In psychiatric care, doctors depend on information from interactions with patients to arrive at the right diagnosis and appropriate therapy (Brisset C, Leanza Y, Rosenberg E, Vissandjée B, Kirmayer LJ, Muckle G, et al. language barriers in mental health care: a survey of primary care practitioners. J Immigr Minor Health. 2014;16(6):1238–46). This is a qualitative descriptive study which seeks to investigate language barriers faced by psychiatrists in their interactions with patients and the effectiveness of the strategies which are employed to deal with the barriers.

Methods: Research questions are informed by Convergence (Giles H. Communication Accommodation Theory. In: Baxter LA, Braithewaite DO, editors. Engaging theories in interpersonal communication: multiple perspectives. Thousand Oaks ( CA): Sage Publications; 2008. p. 161–73). Using semi-structured interviews, psychiatric doctors from the three state-owned psychiatric hospitals in Ghana report their experiences with convergence strategies they use, and offer suggestions that could inform future studies and policy formulation with regard to psychiatric care in Ghana. A qualitative conventional content analysis was applied whereby coding categories were derived straight from the text data.

Results: The literature suggests that the study is novel with reference to Ghana. Similar studies (Lee E. Cross-cultural communication: therapeutic use of interpreters in mental health for professionals and clinicians. In: Lee E, editor. Working with Asian Americans: a guide for clinicians. New York (NY): The Guilford Press; 1997; Swartz L, Drennan G. Beyond Words: notes on the ‘irrelevance’ of language to mental health services in South Africa. Transcult Psychiatry. 2000;37(2):185–201; Jarvis GE, Ahmed R, Ryder A, Kirmayer LJ. Assessing language barriers to mental health services in a multiethnic population: preliminary findings. Presentation at Health care Access for Linguistic Minorities: Breaking the Barriers. Montreal, Quebec, Canada; 2014) corroborate this paper’s findings that language barriers have the potential of causing misdiagnoses if psychiatrists do not employ effective communication strategies.

Conclusions: The paper recommends areas for further research and improvement measures which carry policy implications.

KEYWORDS:

• Psychiatry
• language barriers
• interpreter
• convergence
• health care

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethical approval

This research approved by the Ethics Committee of the College of Humanities, University of Ghana, Legon, Accra. The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose.

Notes

1 For more details on Communication Accommodation Theory and its application to communication in health care see Giles [12]; Bonfiglio [13].

2 Akan is a Ghanaian language with three major dialects: Akuapem, Fante, Asante [27].

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mercy Akrofi Ansah

Mercy Akrofi Ansah received her PhD in Linguistics from The University of Manchester, UK, and is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana. Her research interests include Description and Documentation of the grammar of less-studied languages; Language use in multilingual contexts and Biographical research. Her most recent book chapter publication is ‘Receiving Justice in our mother tongue: The role of the court interpreter in Ghanaian law courts’ (2019, Sun Press).

Mercy Adzo Klugah

Mercy Adzo Klugah is a PhD candidate at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana and a Leiden ASA visiting fellow at the African Studies Centre, University of Leiden. She holds a Bachelor of Education in Arts (B. Ed Arts) and a Master of Philosophy (M. Phil) in Ghanaian Languages and Linguistics from the University of Cape Coast, Ghana. Her research interests include Language use in specific domains; and Language and Culture.