1 Educational objectives.

1 General aims.
The main objective is to learn the main aspects of the nosography of mental disorders, the clinical aspects, and the most important protective and risk factors for psychopathological symptoms, mainly regarding mood disorders, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia spectrum disorders, addictions, and substance use disorders. Another main objective of the course concerns the manifestations of mental disorders in different cultures. Cross-cultural Psychiatry is based on the conception that the functioning of the human psyche, while being universally similar, changes according to profound relationships with the culture in which each person is involved and lives, including, for example, the type of family, ethical and moral values, technologies, and ideological systems.

1.2    Specific Aims.
1.2.1 Knowledge and Understanding
The course focuses on the characteristics of the abovementioned mental disorders and the most important risk and prevention factors. Another focus is on the basic elements to formulate a diagnostic hypothesis and understand an adequate therapeutic project, even in various cultural and sociological diversities.

1.2.2 Applying Knowledge and Understanding
The student will be able to apply the knowledge of the aforementioned issues to achieve the ability of categorical and dimensional diagnostic evaluation in clinical and transcultural psychiatry, considering possible projects and therapeutic, rehabilitative, and prevention interventions.

1.2.3 Making judgments
Ability to understand the basic psychopathology of mental disorders and to recognize the different symptoms also in the light of transcultural and sociological aspects to obtain correct diagnostic formulations and to be able to understand appropriate therapeutic pathways.

1.2.4 Communication skills
Development of adequate linguistic and communicative knowledge regarding the epidemiology, psychopathology, and clinic of the main mental disorders in local and transcultural contexts.

1.2.5 Learning skills
At the end of the course, the student will have learned the main and essential elements for the evaluation of the symptoms of mental disorders in the context of different cultures, formulating diagnostic hypotheses, and understanding appropriate therapeutic projects.

References

Bhugra, D., & Bhui, K. (Eds.). (2018). Textbook of Cultural Psychiatry (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781316810057

American Psychiatric Association. (2022). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed., text rev.). https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.books.9780890425787