An explanation of the difficulties created by language barriers in the medical encounter between patients and health care professionals. Interpreters, while necessary, may also affect the patient physician relationship.
Newly arrived immigrants seeking health care in the United States encounter several problems including language, cultural, societal, and logistic barriers.
Sanism, irrational prejudice against people with mental illness including erroneous and stereotypical beliefs, perverts legal proceedings involving the mentally ill.
The revisions balance a growing understanding of gender identity disorders and societal views with the need to retain conditions that benefit from intervention and the removal of which would hamper patients’ ability to receive medical treatment.