[...]... the family’s name • Keep an open mind about attitudes toward mental illness and its treatments Asian American physicians are on a continuum regarding embracing psychiatric care The more traditional, the greater the delay, and the sicker they will be when they present Stigma is as strong as in American physicians, but that said, many young Asian American physicians of today easily and quickly come for. .. him again and again that he was always falling short of their expectations Guilt feelings are also highly prevalent among physicians The secret omnipotence of physicians may lead them to think that they are personally responsible 8 The Physician as Patient for everything that happens to the patient, overlooking the fact that the practice of medicine always involves collaboration Physicians can only make... family patterns, black versus African American self-designation, assimilation, nonverbal communication and language, eye contact, gestures and the cross-racial therapeutic relationship, and much more have great relevance and meaning for mental health professionals who treat African American physicians Hispanic Physicians The health of Hispanic physicians has not been extensively studied, with the exception... common groups are Chinese, Filipino, Asian Indian, Vietnamese, Korean, and Japanese Asian American physicians are represented by all of these, with most being Chinese, Filipino, and Asian Indian There are no data on the prevalence of mental illness, including substance abuse and dependence, in Asian American doctors When the clinician is assessing an Asian American physician, it is prudent to employ principles... Physicians and the Culture of Medicine”), results showed that women physicians report generally good health habits, and although the demographics included white, African American, Asian American, and Hispanic physicians, there were no specific illness vulnerabilities in minority physicians 17 18 The Physician as Patient African American Physicians There is a dearth of published literature on the health. .. fellowship at the prestigious Cleveland Clinic While there, he became the surgical director of pediatric cardiac and lung transplantation Finally, in 2001 he was named chief of pediatric and congenital cardiac surgery at the Arkansas Children’s Hospital in Little Rock, Arkansas There he was the first endowed chair in pediatric and congenital cardiac surgery Three years after arriving, on the day after Christmas,... “Outline for Cultural Formulation” (American Psychiatric Association 200 0a) It aids the clinician in at least four ways to obtain a rich biopsychosocial impression and to implement treatment (Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry, Committee on Cultural Psychiatry 2002): 22 The Physician as Patient 1 Evaluation of the patient s cultural/ethnic identity 2 Cultural explanations of the illness 3 Cultural factors... excessive masculinity Hispanic male physicians will vary enormously in how easily they accept professional help, especially psychiatric help, and from whom They may be ashamed of being ill and will Minority Physicians and International Medical Graduates 21 deny or rationalize the degree of their pain or dysfunction Their marriages will vary from classically traditional to dual career They may not be able... can be wrenching for all parties • Watch for and be empathic with homosexuality struggles Gay or lesbian Asian American physicians have even more challenges than their non-Asian counterparts A homosexual relationship is considered to be sexual lust in Buddhism, a breach of the harmony of yin and yang in Taoism, and a sin in Christianity (Nakajima et al 1996) For some families, it is a source of shame... wait out the brief hospital stay and make the statements necessary to receive a discharge order from the inpatient attending He also knew that the patient had had multiple hospitalizations and was unlikely to benefit from another He explained to the patient that to continue the treatment as an outpatient, she would need to agree to call him before acting on her suicidal impulses She reluctantly said .