Interpreting in mental health. An approach to action protocols

Abstract

Mental health is a fundamental right. However, the mechanisms to achieve its fulfillment when there are linguistic and/or cultural barriers are not as well developed as they must. Interpreting in mental health settings is a new topic with not much researched background. This study follows a qualitative methodology. So, the main objective of this article is to make a comparison between existing guidelines and protocols on working with interpreters in mental health settings and go deep through the knowledge of this specialization. This would be considered as a starting point for future researches, and, at the same time, this would help mental health specialists to work with interpreters in cross-cultural therapies. We started from the point that health care is a fundamental right. Then, we examine institutions and existing legislative roles giving special emphasis on foreign populations that do not share the same language and/or culture. After this contextualization, we focused on putting in common different points that the different analyzed protocols share. Finally, we made some conclusions from the comparison of these protocols.