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Multicultural issues in counselling

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Multicultural Issues in Counselling

Question 1 – Culture in Influencing Counselling as a Profession

Counselling services are sought by people from different cultural backgrounds. This

necessitates the need for multicultural counselling from psychologists and encouragement from

colleges and universities by incorporating cultural diversity in their curriculum. Culture is used

to describe the beliefs, values, and practices of a society. Cultural diversity encompasses values,

beliefs, religious background, socioeconomic status, and sexuality.

Multicultural counselling involves a professional counsellor recognizing, appreciating,

and building upon the unique talents and contributions of their clients, irrespective of their class,

religion, gender, language, and nationality (Gopalkrishnan, 2018). It means that the counsellor

does not have room to apply his cultural biases or values but offers the required services from the

client’s world. It would not be beneficial if a client comes seeking counselling services and ends

up frustrated. This would only be avoided if the counsellor fully understands the client's cultural

background, allowing him to develop a positive counselling relationship with the client.

Understanding a client’s cultural background allows a counsellor to build a strong

relationship between the client and the counsellor, which increases the chances of the client

receiving the help they are seeking (Morris, 2014). Through cultural background, the counsellor

understands why the client is seeking help, how the culture helped the client develop, and hence

how to deliver help to that individual. A culturally sensitive and diverse counsellor respects the

different opinions, attitudes, and values of various cultures, which allows the client to feel more

comfortable, hence the ability to share personal information necessary when receiving help from

the counsellor.
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Cultural sensitivity allows therapists to interact with clients from diverse backgrounds,

including clients from underserved communities. This is facilitated by the increasing cultural

diversity across nations, making counsellors who are not culturally competent irrelevant in the

industry, for they would serve only a limited population. For instance, the number of people who

initially identified as homosexual, those who lived with chronic conditions, and the number of

family configurations and living arrangements are changing drastically, making it necessary for

therapists to enrich themselves with cultural diversity to serve their clients better (Morris, 2014).

The respectful model was designed to ensure that counsellors serve their clients

holistically and ethically during their sessions. The model involves ten aspects essential for a

person during their psychological development and well-being. The aspects include religious,

economic, sexual, psychological, ethnic, chronological, trauma, family, unique, and location

backgrounds of a client. A clear understanding of the model allows the therapist to do minimal or

no harm to their clients, which is the ethical standard of counselling. However, multicultural

counselling faces problems such as cultural biasness from therapists who possess cultural

biasness and behaviors towards particular cultures, and as a result, they may be culturally

insensitive towards a client from such a culture (Gopalkrishnan, 2018). To face this threat,

cultural awareness, knowledge, and skills should be educated to counsellors from colleges and

universities.

Question 2: Psychosocial Barriers to Multicultural Counselling.

There are many obstacles that face multicultural therapists in the process of offering their

professional services to people of different cultural backgrounds. These obstacles vary from

language barriers to lack of essential cultural information between the client and the counsellor.
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As a result, these barriers influence the quality of services that the counsellor will offer to the

client. The barriers are as discussed below.

Language barriers. Different cultural backgrounds may be defined by their language, which

differs from other cultures, leading to miscommunications between the client and the counsellor.

Some of the consequences of language barriers between the client and the counsellor include

misinterpretations, miscommunications, and misdiagnosis (De Piano, 2020). Additionally, the

two parties may not develop a good rapport, which is essential when counselling, for it allows

the client to be open with the counsellor, hence achieving the desired results. Language barrier is

common to bilingual or immigrant clients. The level of acculturation of a client also determines

the command of the local language. Clients with low levels of acculturation may have issues

expressing themselves in the local language, hence hindering the quality of services they receive

from the counsellor.

Counselling is defined by the interpersonal interactions between the client and the

counsellor, which makes communication a key aspect of counselling. Any misinterpretation may

lead to negative outcomes, and hence it is essential to be clear in both verbal and non-verbal

communication (Beck & Kulzer, 2018). Non-verbal communication is mostly misinterpreted

since it is highly influenced by culture. Some examples of non-verbal communications essential

in multicultural counselling include high-low context communication, proxemics, and

paralanguage, among others. For instance, the US is considered a low context cultural society,

while China is a high context society. For a counsellor from the US helping a Chinese client, the

therapist needs to be aware of the high context silent rules such as the use of coded messages and

their respectful ways of saying yes or no, or else they may not understand each other well, and

this would lead to negative outcome of the whole process.

References

Beck, K., & Kulzer, J. (2018). Teaching Counseling Microskills to Audiology Students:

Recommendations from Professional Counseling Educators. Seminars in Hearing, 39(1),

91–106. https://doi.org/10.1055/s-0037-1613709

De Piano, F. (2020). Cross-cultural counselling: the Arab-Palestinian case. Routledge.

Gopalkrishnan N. (2018). Cultural Diversity and Mental Health: Considerations for Policy and

Practice. Frontiers in Public Health, 6, 179. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2018.00179

Morris, B. (2014). The impact of culture & ethnicity on the counselling process: perspectives of

genetic counsellors from minority ethnic groups.

http://scholarcommons.sc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3694&context=etd

Olive, J. L. (2014). Reflecting on the tensions between Emic and Etic perspectives in life history

research: Lessons Learned. Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 15(2).

https://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/2072/3656