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Locura is a term used by Latinos in the United States and Latin America to refer to a severe form of chronic psychosis. The condition is attributed to an inherited vulnerability, to the effect of multiple life difficulties, or to a combination of both factors. Symptoms ehibited by persons with locura include incoherence, agitation, auditory and visual hallucinations, inability to follow rules of social interaction, unpredictability, and possible violence.

What is Cultural Competency

Culture consists of a body of learned beliefs, traditions, and guides for behaving and interpreting behavior that are shared among members of a particular group. It includes values, beliefs, customs, communication styles, behaviors, practices, and institutions. The visible aspects of a culture include clothing, art, buildings, food; the less visible aspects of culture include values, norms, worldviews, and expectations.

Culture influences an individual’s health beliefs, behaviors, activities and medical treatment outcomes. Because of the significant influence of culture upon health and related outcomes, health care professionals should be culturally competent in order to provide optimum health care to patients.

Cultural competency in the context of health care provision consists of: Awareness and acceptance of cultural differences Awareness of one’s own cultural values Recognition that people of different cultures have different ways of communicating, behaving, interpreting, and problem-solving Recognition that cultural beliefs impact patient’s health beliefs, help-seeking activities, interactions with health care professionals, health care practices, and health care outcomes, including adherence to prescribed regimens. An ability and willingness to adapt the way one works to fit the patient’s cultural or ethnic background in order to provide optimal care for the patient.

Early socialization of the Mexican and Mexican-American children in the form of authoritarian parenting and parental modeling of behaviors indicating that mental illness is undesirable was postulated to contribute to the development of the schemas of Collectivism (emphasis on community over the individual) and Fear of Locura (idea that anxiety could result in psychosis) in the children. In turn, these schemas along with a sense of "simpatia" (promotion of behaviors that generate pleasant social relationships), were expected to result in a bias for somatic interpretations in the Mexican and Mexican-American children. Such a bias was hypothesized to affect the anxiety reporting of the children.

The person experiencing SFD shows at least two psychotic symptoms, which may be either "positive" or "negative" psychotic symptoms. The terms "positive" and "negative" are not used in their usual meanings of positive being good and negative being bad. In discussing psychosis, positive and negative are used with a more formal medical connotation. Medically, "positive" refers to a factor being present that does not normally occur, or to an excess of some factor or behavior