In thinking about what culture or special population I would really want to learn and understand about, the Mexican culture kept coming to mind. I believe in my practice I will see a lot of clients who are Mexican and I would truly like to understand their culture and not be ignorant to it. Every culture has their own special ways and I as a counselor would love to learn and understand so one day I can give them the best counseling possible. It is important to me to fully understand their culture because not everyone will respond the same way and in order for there to be a good client/therapist relationship, I need to learn and understand the best I can. In my paper I will take a look at the Mexican culture, how it differs from American culture and ways to help improve my relationship with a Mexican client. I will look at their social structure, family, religion, language, literacy, communication styles, socioeconomic position, traditional health care beliefs and practices, and health care seeking behaviors. The Mexican culture is dynamic and expressed in various ways, owing to individual life experience and personality. Some Mexicans living in the United States may be more or less acculturated to mainstream U.S. culture (Smith, CH 2 online). I will also research some different types of therapy/treatment approaches that would be most effective for the Mexican client and what they are dealing with. With all my research and findings I hope to learn and become better aware of their culture and possibly others, so I can be the best therapist I can be. No therapist wants their stereotypes, biases, and culture bound attitudes toward their client's culture to make it difficult for them to serve them effectively (Wright, 1988). ... ... middle of paper ... ...cs. Language barriers can really hinder the client/therapist relationship. It would be very beneficial if the therapist could speak or at least understand Spanish but that can not always be the case, usually second and third generation Hispanics speak both Spanish and English and may often switch between languages. Altarriba and Santiago-Rivera (1994) provided a review regarding the use of language in counseling; they suggested that "the strategic use of language switching and language mixing in the counseling environment may be extremely useful when treating bilingual clients". For example, clients may choose to describe certain painful issues in their non dominant language, distancing them selves from the emotionally laden content of those issues. A form of bilingual therapy may prove to be highly successful for some Hispanic clients (Altarriba and Bauer, 1998).
Across the world’s population, mental health has recently become a problem in today’s society. This is especially the case in the Latino/a community. Some of the most commonly identified issues affecting the Latino community are, depression, chemical and substance use, domestic violence, and suicide. On the same note, teenaged Latina high school women have high rates of suicide attempts. This has become a quickly rising issue due to many Latino individuals not seeking help from programs or services that are available for many reasons. One of the main reasons that many individuals not getting assistance, is due to the lack of health insurance.
Race and ethnicity can influence a client’s experience of self and others in a variety of ways. A client’s personal race and ethnicity can influence his or her experience within the context of therapy through the set of beliefs he or she brings into the room. This set of beliefs and customs influences how he or she views therapy and whether there is motivation to be there. If the client’s culture does not usually seek therapy for their problems, or even believe in mental illness, it is likely the client will have apprehensions about trusting or speaking to the clinician. If the clinician is not aware of this possibility, the clinician may wonder why the client is in therapy if he or she will not speak or allow rapport to be built. A responsible clinician will take this into consideration.
Allison showed lack of awareness about Carmen’s cultural values. Allison should seek training about counseling Latinos. Allison’s practicum is in an agency located in a predominately Latino neighborhood. Carmen might not return to counseling with Allison, but Allison is likely to have another Latino client. Thus, receiving appropriate training about counseling Latinos would prepare Allison for future clients that she would encounter. The four dimensions of training that Corey et al. (2011) recommended are: self-exploration, didactic course work, internship, and experiential approaches (p. 145). There are various options that Allison has to educate herself around providing effective and ethically appropriate counseling with Latinos.
The increase and changing demography in the United State today, with the disparities in the health status of people from different cultural backgrounds has been a challenge for health care professionals to consider cultural diversity as a priority. It is impossible for nurses and other healthcare professionals to learn and understand theses diversity in culture, but using other approaches like an interpreter is very helpful for both nurses and patients. In this paper of a culturally appropriate care planning, I will be discussing on the Hispanic American culture because, I had come across a lot of them in my career as a nurse. The Hispanic are very diverse in terms of communication and communities and include countries like Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico, South and Central America, and some of them speak and write English very well, some speaks but can’t write while some can’t communicate in English at all but Spanish.
Balderrama represents a caring teacher that found herself not understanding the difference between English and Spanish because she grew in California. This allowed her to effect pedagogical accommodations to the Latinos ass a teacher. However, she agrees that xenophobia is rife and hard to be eliminated within the society. The minority and new migrants within the society face numerous challenges ranging from culture shock to acclimatizing to the new environment and bilingualism and biliteracy would enhance their learning experiences. According to Colin Baker bilingualism and biliteracy indeed influences critical thinking, rationality, and sensitivity to other cultures, empathy, and detached or balanced awareness. Therefore, the importance of teachers is promoting biliteracy and bilingualism cannot be understated because it is the backbone of effective learning through integrating a minority group into the majority group. The majority need to learn the language to enhance their understanding that is the importance towards achieving critical thinking, rationality, and sensitivity to other cultures, empathy, and detached or balanced awareness. Additionally, realizing that bilingualism cannot be detached from any community that freely promotes and accommodates the language spoken by the other community helps in promoting biliteracy. Therefore, the
Piedra, L.M., Andrade, C.D., & Larrison, C.R. (2011). Building response capacity: The need for universally available language services. In L.P. Buki, & L.M. Piedra (Eds.), Creating Infrastructures for Latino Mental Health, Part 1 (pp. 55-75). New York, NY: Springer Science & Business Media, LLC. doi: 10.1007/978-1-4419- 9452-3_3
The ten leading causes of death among the Hispanic American population are mostly in line with the ten leading causes of death among all Americans. It is more surprising what causes from the American list are missing from the Hispanic American list – stroke, Alzheimer's Disease, and suicide (Centers For Disease Control And Prevention, 2009, 2010). Considering that sixty percent of deaths in the United States are attributable to behavioral factors, circumstances in one's social system, and what and who a person is exposed to in their environment (Nash, Reifsnyder, Fabius, & Pracilio, 2011), it is evident that health care providers must investigate these aspects in order to provide quality care. Recognizing the importance of providing culturally appropriate care, I attempted to determine if there were reasons for what I knew about the Hispanic culture and to discover what things I did not know. I performed a transcultural assessment on Elizabeth, a young Hispanic American female, keeping in mind that caring for a Hispanic American patient calls for developing a trusting relationship through awareness and understanding. In the clinical setting this can be accomplished by starting conversations with small talk and remembering that because a Hispanic person seems agreeable to a treatment plan does not necessarily mean they understand or will comply (Giger, 2013).
It is important to include cultural issues in the helping process to be more effective. We also need cultural competence because the U.S. is becoming more diverse. Therefore with diversity comes different beliefs, norms, and values. Eurocentric values dominate sciences and began cultural universals which puts the clash of dominate and non-dominate cultural behaviors in motion. In 1996 the NASW Code of Ethics increased the recognition of cultural competence. It is important to know diversity exist within ethnic and cultural groups because social workers need to know that relationships between helping professionals and clients may be strained. This happens because of the distrust between groups. Another important aspect is that the professional realizes their own values, biases, and beliefs. The reason for this is because they must value diversity to start with and understand the dynamics of difference. Culturally competent practitioners have to go through developmental process of using their own culture as a starting point to meet all behaviors. Striving for cultural competence is a long term process of development. The literature on cultural competence is theoretical and conceptual. They have not been evaluated in a systematic way. Roughly there are 2 million Native americans in the U.S. Which survive decimating disease, over-repressed in child welfare system, suffer from health problems, and are among the poorest people in the United States. Working with them clearly falls within the social work clearly mandate to serve vulnerable and oppressed clients. However, we do not know how many people from this group is actually receiving help from social workers. Even though it is important to train social workers to provide care in th...
According to most, ethnicity usually is displayed in the values, attitudes, lifestyles, customs, rituals, and personality types of individuals who identify with particular ethnic groups. Ethnic identifications and memberships in an ethnic group has farreaching effects on both groups and individuals, controlling assess to opportunities in life, feeling of well being and mastery over the futures of one's child and future. These feelings of belonging and attachment to a certain group of people for whatever reason are a basic feature of the human condition. These ties are called "ethnic ties" and the group of people that one is tied to is an "ethnic group." In the general sense, an ethnic group consists of those who share a unique social and cultural heritage that is passed on from generation to generation.
Understanding culture is an important aspect of being a social worker; this does not mean learning common cultural traits is of great significance to the social work profession. “Consider the second-generation Japanese-American social worker whose practice consists of Mexican-American and African-American families. Memorizing national traits or cultural rituals would be interesting and informative, but ultimately these would be an inaccurate basis on which to “know” these particular families” (Dorfman, 1996, p. 33). When understanding cultural competence it is important to learn from the client about their culture in order to serve them in the most helpful and efficient way possible. There is a major drawback to memorizing information, and that is this information will not give you a real understanding of whom your client is and what life...
There are different perspectives, however, which put stress on various aspects of culture and try to identify its boundaries and its substitutes. Some regard culture as separate entity from demographic factors, some point out acculturation as one of the obstacles, which makes culture difficult to identify, some show how an intimate and meaningful relationship between a counsellor and a culturally different client to be established. In this essay I will be discussing what the different concepts of understanding of culture in Counselling are, by examining different authors and perspectives and evaluating their strengths and weaknesses.
“Culture is a cluster of intangibles and tangible aspects of life passed down from generation to generation.”(cite) More importantly, culture is define as the way of life of a group of people who share these same values and beliefs, therefore, we will check the Hispanic culture. The U.S. Census Bureau defines Hispanic or Latino as mutual inhabitants in the United States who are of Latin American or Spanish origin. Latinos has become a larger proportion of the U.S. population, there is a greater need for social work education to offer culturally sensitive training to social work students (Furman, Bender, Lewis, & Shears, 2006; Iglehart & Becerra, 1995). A Hispanic woman, Marcela Hede voices that, “Being Hispanic is mainly defined by my language
Smith, T. B., Rodríguez, M. D., & Bernal, G. (2011). Culture. In J. C. Norcross (Ed.), Psychotherapy relationships that work (2nd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press.
Hispanic immigrants living in American are regularly faced with communication problems. When one’s native culture varies from the norm they are often the one expected to eliminate the disparity. Language barriers present for the Hispanic population living in America and their physical therapists can cause significant problems, not only for communication in general but also for diagnosis and treatment. In order to overcome communication barriers in the field of physical therapy, providers need to become more linguistically and culturally competent.
Being bilingual always made my life differ as if I lived two lives, speaking Spanish at home and English everywhere outside of home. On the daily basis at my house, my family speaks Spanish. When we communicate we speak very fast, at times we can not even understand one another. After this occurs we all burst out in laughter super loud, no boundaries are enforced in our lexicon. The enforcement changes when entering a different discourse community.