Westminster, CO phone:
A Basic Misunderstanding of Multiculturalism in the Helping Professions References Introduction In my multicultural competencies course for graduate students, I used to start the course by asking my students a simple question.
As a multiculturally competent supervisor, I can usually tease out the subtle biases and value systems of other professionals and link my observations to supervision.
We discuss these issues and understand the larger issues premising the need for competencies. So for we helping professionals, there is a difference between a helping professional who is culturally competent and one who is not. But another necessary question was the perspective of the client. Does the client see a difference and would the client care of these differences?
The answer is that multicultural competencies are more than just additive to the helping professional. It is unfair for critics to say that multicultural competencies just add a little to the value of the therapeutic relationship.
Multicultural competencies are not just additive, they are transformative to the helping professional and to the therapeutic relationship. Multicultural competencies Different methods of counseling and psychotherapy critical to the therapeutic relationship just as much as a theoretical orientation.
Just as much as one could not practice therapy or counseling without a theoretical orientation psychodynamic, cognitive, humanisticone could not practice therapy or counseling without multicultural competencies. The research and scholarship on multicultural competencies and orientations toward diversity and multiculturalism generally show that helping professionals who are culturally competent and who address diversity issues e.
In the end, I stopped offering this question because it engenders a false dichotomy. Good helping professionals are ones who are theoretically competent and multiculturally competent and oriented they have an interest in diversity and an interest in growing to learn more about themselves as cultural beings ; who have clinical experience with diverse clientele; and who have a good awareness of their own worldview, biases, and expectations for counseling and for the client.
Multicultural competencies are part of every step of the therapy process. From intake, to assessment, to building the relationship, to interventions, to assessment, to termination, multicultural competencies are implicated and necessary throughout every step.
The need for multicultural competencies is present from the first contact with a client. For instance, imagine being a male therapist walking into the waiting area to greet a client.
The new client happens to be a Muslim woman wearing a hijab head covering. What can the therapist assume about the client and what may he not assume? How might this misstep be addressed in a culturally congruent manner? Finally, if the therapist were to address it, what might he expect the client to do with and for him in that moment?
Multicultural competencies are implicated as necessary skills from the very first instant of therapeutic contact. Why Multiculturalism and Multicultural Competencies Counseling is about the ways in which we help people tell their lives.
Over repeated telling, we learn the narrative and arcs of the lived experiences. Simple in some ways, but as any helping professional knows, we are involved in the most complex and dynamic human relationships, because not only are we attempting to learn about the client but we are simultaneously helping them change.
Multicultural competencies are not necessarily a distinct theory but rather they represent a transtheoretical approach to working with clients.
How might one create better relationships with the client? How might interventions be better adapted for the client? How might the working alliance be strengthened?
Multicultural competencies and orientations are also helpful for the counselor in developing a greater awareness of oneself and oneself as a cultural being in an interaction with another cultural being.
Simply stated, multiculturalism also provides the counselor with a framework to better understand cultural issues that may impact the therapy relationship.
The counselor benefits from a dual exploration of these issues with the client.
Multicultural competencies are transtheoretical and so are not an explicit theory of development, psychopathology, mental health, or treatment. There is no one multicultural theory that posits a framework for the development of psychopathology. But multicultural competencies are implicated in the ways that variables and constructs are identified and evaluated as contributions to psychopathology, for instance.
For example, if we were to examine paranoia within a population, it may be important to consider the role of race.THE BASICS OF ADDICTION COUNSELING: DESK REFERENCE AND STUDY GUIDE MODULE II: ADDICTION COUNSELING THEORIES, PRACTICES AND SKILLS - Tenth Edition - June NAADAC, the Association for Addiction Professionals N.
. initiativeblog.com is approved by the American Psychological Association (APA) to sponsor continuing education for psychologists.
initiativeblog.com maintains responsibility for this program and its content. initiativeblog.com, provider #, is approved as a provider for social work continuing education by the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) initiativeblog.com, through .
(The following is an exchange between a male client Jake and his male therapist. The names and identifying information in all the clinical illustrations in this course have been changed to protect the identities of clients.). This paper, coauthored with James S.
Simkin in , was the Gestalt Therapy chapter in the edition of Corsini and Wedding's Current Psychotherapies (4th Edition). It appears here with the kind permission of the publisher, F.E. Peacock, Publishers, Inc.
of Itasca, Illinois. Psychotherapy is the practice of spending time with a trained therapist to help diagnose and treat mental and emotional problems. Therapy can take various forms—cognitive behavioral therapy.
Psychotherapy is often the first form of treatment recommended for depression. Called "therapy" for short, the word psychotherapy actually involves a variety of treatment techniques.
During psychotherapy, a person with depression talks to a licensed .