This thesis analyzes the degree of cultural relevance in the Asha Gram Mental Health Program in Barwani, India. The focus is on the role of community mental health workers as bridges between a professional culture of psychiatry and the local cultural understandings of mental health. Processes of cultural interaction are analyzed on a continuum from negotiation, defined as interaction without fundamental cultural change, to accommodation, defined as interaction with cultural change. Accommodation at the level of the vision of mental health disorders was limited while there was an active negotiation that resulted in some transformation of the social vision. Negotiation with communities at the level of relationships underpinned this transformation and contributed to a social accommodation with local forms of relationships. Although, professional and class power were important obstacles to achieving cultural relevance, the Program also demonstrates the necessity to subvert this power in order to create social change.

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This study presents how Indian counsellors in urban India work with Western counselling methods with Indian clients. The study is categorised as part of the cross-cultural counselling research field where a major assumption is that counselling methods are part universal, part contextual. This study explores how counsellors in Bangalore culturally adapt Western methods. The method used is qualitative semi-structured interviews with seven counsellors at Parivarthan Counselling, Training and Research Centre in Bangalore. The theoretical framework in this study is based on New Institutional Theory, with constructs such as Glocalisation, Translation, and finally Cultural Preparedness to understand the context of the counselling profession in Bangalore. Results show that the Bangalore counsellors meet clients that are culturally prepared for short-term and advice-oriented counselling. The clients are part of a context where family and spirituality are of great importance. The counsellors use Western counselling methods only but adapt their approach and language with indigenous elements and emphasise the individuality of each client. They use a person-centred and an integrative approach, in which they are informed by several Western counselling methods, but do not use them dogmatically. The individuals’ needs and the relationship between counsellor and client is emphasised. Parivarthan Counselling, Training and Research Centre is part of a complex organisational field with influences from India, the East as well as from the West.