University of Michigan School of Nursing

Denise M. Saint Arnault

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Denise M. Saint Arnault, PhD, RN

Associate Professor
Division of Acute, Critical, and Long-term Care (Division I)
Room 2303

University of Michigan School of Nursing
400 North Ingalls Building
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-5482

Telephone: (734) 615-0537
Fax: (734) 936-5525

Scholarly Expertise / Activity

Interests:

  • Women’s mental health
  • Culture and mental health
  • Immigrant women
  • Gender specific mental health risks
  • Transcultural psychiatry

Dr. Saint Arnault’s research centers on gender and culturally specific influences on mental health. She develops and tests her Cultural Determinants of Help Seeking model. This model includes symptoms, meanings such as stigma and meaning of life, social support, social negativity, and help seeking. Her Clinical Ethnographic Interview intervenes to promote help seeking. She also examines cultural factors that influence meaning, expectation, and expression of mental illness. She examines the importance of physical as well as emotional symptom experience for people from a variety of cultures. In addition, Dr. Saint Arnault focuses on the impact of gender-based trauma on mental health, functioning and quality of life. She is researching the feasibility and efficacy of mind-body interventions to promote mental and physical health for women. Recent research focuses on East Asian Immigrants and Navajo people, but she is interested in expanding cultural groups.

Current Research Grants and Programs:

  • Clinical Ethnographic Interview: an intervention to promote help seeking for East Asian Immigrant Women, PI, NCMHD RO1 (pending)
  • Cultural and biological mechanisms influencing somatic symptoms in highly distressed East Asian Immigrant women. PI, NIMH RO1 (to be submitted Feb 2012)
  • The feasibility of the use of Biodynamic Therapy to enhance quality of life in women who have experienced trauma, PI, Safe Ireland (National Domestic Violence Agency)

Teaching

Dr. Saint Arnault’s teaching focuses on Psychiatric and Mental Health nursing care.  She specializes in mood disorders and women’s mental health.  She has published chapters in Psychiatric nursing textbooks of cross cultural psychiatric nursing.  She has developed and taught courses ranging from the fundamentals of psychiatric nursing to international and global health, cultural competency in nursing, qualitative and mixed research methods, philosophy of the natural and social sciences, community based ethnography, clinical ethnography, concepts of the self across cultures, transcultural psychiatry and comparative health care (US and Japan).  She is passionate about developing and teaching broad-based evidence to inform culturally relevant psychiatric nursing care for diverse populations, and the use of creative methods to enhance our knowledge development.

Affiliations / Service

  • President, Council of Nursing and Anthropology, 2005-2011
  • Chairperson, Research Committee, Michigan State University, 2006-2011
  • Chairperson, Undergraduate Program Committee, Michigan State University, 2002-2006
  • Member, Council of Nursing and Anthropology, 2001-2004

Education

  • PhD, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI 1998
  • MS, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 1989
  • BS, Grand Valley State University, Allendale, MI 1980

Publication Highlights

  • Saint Arnault, D.M. & Shimabukuro, S. (in press). The clinical ethnographic interview: Reformulation of the DSM-IV-R cultural formulation into a clinician friendly tool. Transcultural Psychiatry.
  • Saint Arnault, D.M. & Fetters, M. (2011). RO1 Funding for mixed methods research: Lessons learned from the “Mixed-Method Analysis of Japanese Depression” project. Journal of Mixed Methods Research, DOI:10.1177/1558689811416481.
  • Saint Arnault, D.M. and Roels, D. (2011). The maintenance of conformity: Social networks among Japanese women living in America. International Journal of Culture and Mental Health. DOI: 10.1080/17542863.2011.554030
  • Bay, E., Sikorskii, A., Saint Arnault, D.M.& Gao, F. (2009). Sex differences in depressive symptoms and their correlates. Journal of Neuroscience Nursing, 41(6), 298-309.
  • Saint Arnault, D.M. (2009). Cultural determinants of help seeking: A theoretical model for research and practice. Theory for Research and Practice, 23(4):259-278.
  • Saint Arnault, D.M. and Kim, Oksoo. (2008). Asian idioms of distress? Somatic distress symptoms in Japanese and Korean women. Archives in Psychiatric Nursing.
  • Saint Arnault, D. M., Sakamoto, S., & Moriwaki, A. (2006). Somatic and depressive symptoms in female Japanese and American students: A preliminary investigation. Transcultural Psychiatry.
  • Saint Arnault, D. M., Sakamoto, S., & Moriwaki, A. (2005). A cross-cultural study of the experiential structure of emotions of distress: Preliminary findings in a sample of female Japanese and American college students. Psychologia: International Journal of the psychology of the Orient.
  • Saint Arnault, D. M., Sakamoto, S., & Moriwaki, A. (2005). The association between negative self-descriptions and depressive symptomology: Does culture make a difference? Archives of Psychiatric Nursing, 19(2):93-100.
  • Saint Arnault, D.M. (2003). The Japanese. Encyclopedia of Medical Anthropology (Vol 1). Yale University.
  • Saint Arnault, D.M. (2002). Help seeking and social support among Japanese sojourners. Western Journal of Nursing Research, 24(3), 295-306.
  • Saint Arnault, D.M. (2001). Culturally relevant mental health nursing. In E. Varcarolis (ed.), Foundations of Psychiatric Nursing (4th ed.), p. 144-163. Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders Company.

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