Multicultural Counseling Essay

With the population of individuals, and families from diverse backgrounds, challenges counselors’ ability to meet the needs of a growing and diverse society. In 1994, Sue Arrendondo and McDavis published what become known as the multicultural counseling competencies framework. These competencies provide a foundation for all counselors to focus on both the culture make-up of the counselor and how culture impacts daily living in a growing diverse society.

Multicultural stems from the concerns that cover a broad range of issues such as race, religion, ethnicity, culture, sexual orientation, and/or disability. Culture is defined as "The beliefs, arts, customs, institutions and all other products of human thought and work created and employed by a people or group at a particular time. People from new and different cultural groups may be negatively stereotyped and heavily discriminated against because of their differences from a main culture. Throughout history multicultural concerns have been prevalent in regard to the cultural of Native Americans, African Americans, Italians, Irish, Jews and other cultural groups. With the gathers of various cultural which is frequent in schools, work social situations, there will inevitably be cultural difference. Refraining from negative stereotyping and discrimination maybe difficult but necessary in an ever changing society (goodtheraphy.org pg. 1) Multicultural is foundational as a professional counselor it’s vital that we are aware of our own bias, so that our job as a helper is being provided and we are able to engage with the client fully. It is very important for the professional to be aware of cultural differences and continue with training and education.

Multicultural Counseling has its ...

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...e individual as opposed to an entire group (Obasi & Leong, 2009). Hence, these values are inconsistent and indirect with people of other cultures. For example, dealing with African/and or African descent they place their emphasis on collectivism and communalism so imposing their views or values that is incompatible with other cultural values can be detrimental to clients. Moreover, employment of the traditional theories that were produced by the 'fathers of psychology' or traditional therapies and treatment practices can result in people underutilizing psychological services, receiving less preferred diagnosis and treatment, and terminating those services prematurely. For these reasons, factors have been attributed to a cultural mistrust of mental health professionals and treatment that is not culturally geared toward people of other cultures. (Obasi & Leong, 2009).