Role-Playing Practice: Using the CFI to Individualize Anxiety Care

Social workers need to be able to identify cultural conceptions of illness and mental illness. Because studies show that anxiety and depression differ from culture to culture and within cultures, it is important to build skill using the Cultural Formulation Interview (CFI) to elicit how an individual has actually incorporated their cultural beliefs. While the core interview is a set of 16 questions, more detailed versions expand on each area. In this Assignment, you sensitively apply the CFI to your case collaboration partner as well as research how to address and individualize anxiety resources for your partner’s culture and needs.

To prepare:

• Read the Diaz (2017) article and take note of their experience using the CFI and the advantages they found in the process. Also, note the minority stress concerns that arise in those working with anxiety issues in different cultures.
• Review the CFI questions and readings in the DSM-5 on cultural variations, syndromes, and idioms.
• Meet your collaboration partner and take turns administering the CFI questions (and any needed subsections) to each other. Your partner will role-play an anxiety issue but otherwise be as true to their situation as possible. Make sure to record the session. See Collaborate Ultra Assignment Guide in Required Resources.
• Observe how the CFI administration process goes and take any notes needed. Based on what you learn about your partner’s needs and culture, you may need to do further research in the suggested readings and library before submitting your Assignment.
• Review the recording and identify a 3-5 minute segment where you are the interviewer that you would like your instructor to use to evaluate the assessment skills you demonstrate.

Submit a 4-page paper, using the Diaz article as well as additional resources about culture, in which you do the following:

• Describe the skills or techniques you used to engage your partner during the CFI. My colleagues and I role-played as therapist and client. We tried to create a warm, welcoming environment so that our clients would feel safe as well as communicate with the therapist.  Active listening was necessary to identify and understand the client’s needs. I feel that active listening and empathy are the two skills that were used the most.
• https://2105rocks.wordpress.com/the-beginning-stage/engaging-in-the-beginning-stage/

• Identify a 3-5 minute segment in your recorded role-play that best demonstrates your ability to apply culturally sensitive assessment skills. Our videos are recordings 3, 6, and 7 where our professor can view the recordings. I am Japanese and Hawaiian, my other colleague is African American and so is my other colleague but from another country. We didn’t have any issues with communicating or with culture.

• Explain which aspects of the CFI were the most helpful in learning about your partner’s personal view of the problem and situation from a cultural perspective. The whole CFI was informative and it allowed us to combine some of the questions. Please add more to this.
• Describe the cultural components (e.g., race/ethnicity, religion, geographic region, socio-economic status, etc.) that may influence your partner, and analyzehow those cultural components influence their mental health experience.  We all pride in not depend on anyone, we are all single-parent household families but that did not influence our anxiety.  What caused our anxiety was work, school, home life, and police brutality.
• Identify which relevant subsections of the CFI you used. Explain why you did (or did not) use a subsection as part of your assessment. Questions 1-4, 6, 8, 13, 14, and 16 were used. We combined some of the other questions as to shorten as we felt that it could have been asked together with the other questions.

• Analyze how you, as a social work treatment provider, might adjust interventions for the client (your partner), their individualized circumstances, and culture of origin. Be specific and demonstrate critical thought through the applicationof concepts in resources. Please see attached resources for this.

• Recommend a specific evidence-based measurement instrument to validate the diagnosis and assess outcomes of treatment. Explain any cultural considerations you made when determining an appropriate instrument, including whether or not the instrument was validated with diverse populations. Please fill this in.