Family mental health in a pluralistic society and the values of the ethnic families

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to rediscover some of the available yet overlooked or fergotten resources which may contribute to the study of family mental healt. The author, professor of family mental health, sees these resources in the values of the ethnic families which challenged and threatened by the social change of our time, still persist safeguarded by the family. Dr. Mos- twin looks beyond the presumed American homogeneity into the deeper and more complicated areas of person’s cultural uniqueness. One of these areas is a „Third value”, a form of cultural identity which integrates the persisting, selective cultural patterns with new behavioral strategies developed in the process of inner change and of sociocultural adjustment. Concentrating on the families of Eastern and Central European background, the author subsumes their leading values under two rubrics: The Golden Rule and The National Myth. The values of the Myth are not as clear in their purpose as the values of The Golden Rule. They are nationalistic in their character and more emotionally loaded than the former. The author who believes that „we are embarking on a Century of the Family”, concludes by four suggestions how the available knowledge about the family’s ethnic values can be used in the field of family mental health. She states: „The family, as an emotional unit responsible for the mental health of an individual, cannot be disregarded in any form of treatment of this individual, nor can it be bypassed in any form of planning for society’s improvement or reorganizations”