improving the quality of mental health interpreting in victoria

12
the quality of the interpreted message cannot be determined by the mental health
professional and consumer.
Other issues have also been raised by mental health staff during training in how to work
collaboratively and effectively with interpreters. These trainees report that some interpreters
show inappropriate behaviour such as over-involvement with the client, or embarrassed
laughter at something the client says, or negative attitudes to symptoms the client
describes or shows. These attitudes may be due to anxiety and lack of understanding, and
insufficient training. Mental health staff also sometimes complain that some interpreters
are unable to interpret something ‘word for word.’ Past training by the VTPU and Ethnic
Mental Health Consultants has been designed to educate staff in the notion that other
languages are not exact translations of English, and therefore a ‘word for word’
interpretation is often for linguistic reasons just not possible or appropriate.
Furthermore, there exists a recognition of the need for interpreters and mental health staff
to be trained in a way that promotes and clarifies professional roles and team work.
Interpreters are often seen by mental health services staff as someone there to be ‘used’,
rather than ‘worked with’, and often mental health professionals are unclear of the
professional role and task of the interpreter. Interpreters can be both disregarded or asked
inappropriate requests regarding the client, their illness, culture or communication beyond
their professional parameters.
In response to the diverse sources of concern regarding mental health interpreting, the
Interpreter Mental Health Training and Debriefing Working Group was set up in 2003 to
determine the need for and interest in developing a training program. This Working Group
comprised several key stakeholders across interpreter agencies, and mental health service
providers 1 . It was clear from preliminary meetings that there was interest in developing
training and debriefing strategies. Yet despite this marked interest, the lack of resources and
structure to investigate and develop training for interpreters and clinicians in mental health
interpreting meant that these efforts were not able to realise proposals at that time.
In spite of the relative paucity of information on mental health interpreting, what does exist
reveals clear local and international support for the existence of training for interpreting in
mental health settings. There is also a developing body of research and experience that
promotes a more inter-professional ‘team’ model for mental health interpreting training and
practice.
Support for the need to develop specialised mental health interpreting training has been
reported by a Canadian hospital-based research unit. In their report on the evaluation of the
Cultural Consultation Services in mental health in Canada, Kirmayer and colleagues,
(2001) identified gaps in the delivery of mental health care to refugee, indigenous and
immigrant communities, such as language barriers to access and adequate care. Kirmayer
et al. (2001) found that improved quality of care was achieved through specialised teams
in transcultural psychiatry, which included interpreters. Amongst the approaches to meet
the gaps in equitable mental health care delivery, the ‘transcultural teams’ used a
pragmatic approach to communication barriers that emphasized the use of interpreters and
1
Past stakeholders involved were the mental health services of North Western
Mental Health and the Werribee Mercy Mental Health Program, the Victorian
Foundation for Survivors of Torture (VFST), and other contributors and interested
parties included the VTPU, AUSit, VITS, NAATI, TIS, the Victorian Deaf Foundation
and the now-defunct Central Health Interpreting Service.