Culture and Health A Critical Perspective Towards Global Health

Most Western health professionals practice in multicultural societies. The influence of culture on illness, health and rehabilitation is therefore very important. Despite this, most lower level health psychology texts skim over these differences and assume our traditional biomedical approach will be appropriate for all. In this completely revised and updated edition of a groundbreaking book, Malcolm MacLachlan redresses the balance by showing how social and cultural aspects interact with the purely physical: from assessment and treatment all the way through to effects on rehabilitation.

Professor Malcolm MacLachlan is with the Centre for Global Health and School of Psychology, Trinity College Dublin. He originally trained and worked as a clinical psychologist, and then as a management consultant, in the UK, before taking up a lectureship at Chancellor College, University of Malawi. There he worked on a range of health promotion projects concerning HIV/AIDS and various tropical diseases, as well as with Mozambican refugees, and held a visiting position at Zomba Mental Hospital. Since moving to Trinity, he has held visiting positions at the Universities of Limpopo, Cape Town and Stellenbosch, all in South Africa, and at the College of Medicine, University of Malawi. Over the last 10 years he has also researched healthrelated aspects of rapid social change and increased multiculturalism in Europe, particularly Ireland. His major research interests concern cultural aspects of health, the psychosocial rehabilitation of people with physical disability and the human dynamics of international aid.
Professor MacLachlan is a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin and the Psychological Society of Ireland, and was elected to membership of the Royal Irish Academy in 2005. He has worked with a broad range of international and development organisations including UNICEF, OECD, WHO and UNESCO, the Academy for Educational Development, Finnish Refugee Council, American Refugee Committee, Banja La Mtsogolo, Concern and Development Co-operation Ireland. He was also a member of an EU-funded specialist group on Psychotrauma and Human Rights. He is Co-Director of the Masters Degree in Global Health at Trinity. He has the entirely unintentional distinction of a peculiar type of multicultural education – being a graduate from universities in Scotland, England, Ireland and Wales.