The idea of “Client Culture” arises in the context of providing Mental Health services in a “Culturally Competent” manner. The ideal of “Cultural Competence” maintains that Mental Health clients are most effectively served when services are provided by persons who have similar cultural/ethnic/racial backgrounds as the Clients.

The great cultural diversity in SCC makes it both imperative and feasible for Mental Health Clients to receive services from providers who have a similar racial/ethnic/cultural background as themselves.

This recognition, that ethnic/racial/cultural competence is something to strive for (and, in fact, demand), has led many consumers to demand what many feel is at least, if not more, fundamental — those who can speak to Mental Health Clients of the cultural experience of being diagnosed with a “Serious Mental Illness (SMI).”

The commonalties of experience of those diagnosed as “SMI,” are, like racial/ethnic/gender issues, shared to greater and lesser degrees from individual to individual. And, though there are varying degrees to which individuals are shaped and affected by their ethnic/racial/gender identity — there is virtually no minority group whose members are not affected in some significant way as a result of belonging to that group. This is no less true of the cultural experience of being a Mental Health Client.

So, what does mental health “Client Culture” consist of? What are the shared experiences which are causing us to demand workers who are capable of addressing our “Culture?”

Mental Health Clients have the stigma of a diagnosis. Most SMI-diagnosed individuals are, or have been, on public benefits. Most have had major ruptures with family and significant others, which are often not reconciled. Most have experienced excruciating isolation and loneliness — many lost for years in an inner experience that they do not know how to integrate or share. Most have been psychiatrically hospitalized — locked up and stripped of every right and power. Most of us have gone through the seemingly endless ordeal of adjusting to med change after med change — weighing the advantages of our meds against the side effects of the meds.

Perhaps the most pervasive and insidious experience we share is the self-stigmatization; the fear and shame; the hopelessness of ever recovering our lives and our peace of mind.

And, in trying to survive; and in trying to heal; many of us have become poets; musicians; artists. And, we have become healers — healers for those whose wounds are like ours.