Ch. #4 Multicultural Perspectives and Diversity Issues

Multicultural competence entails recognizing our limitations and manifests in our willingness to...

(a) Seek consultation and supervision, (b) participate in continuing education, and (c) when appropriate, make referrals to a professional who is competent to work with a particular client population.

Some of the major influences on the treatment and individual responses to disability include:

(a) Sociocultural conditioning; (b) childhood influences; (c) various psychodynamic mechanisms that cultivate cultural tunnel vision; (d) the perception that disability is seen as a punishment for sin; (e) our existential anxiety & aesthetic aversion toward people who have disfigurement, physical limitations, and perceptions toward what "normal" is; and (f) other disability- specific related factors.

What is cultural awareness?

A compassionate and accepting orientation that is based on an understanding of oneself and others within one's culture and context.

What is an oppressed group?

A group of people who have been singled out for differential and unequal treatment and who regard themselves as objects of collective discrimination.

What is a microassault?

A microassault is an explicit derogation characterized by either a verbal or nonverbal attack that is designed to hurt the victim through name-calling, avoidance, or intentional discriminatory acts.

What is multiculturalism?

A multicultural perspective takes into consideration the specific values, beliefs, and actions influenced by a client's ethnicity, gender, religion, socioeconomic status, political views, sexual orientation, physical and mental or cognitive abilities, geographic region, and historical experiences with the dominant culture.

What is cultural tunnel vision?

A perception of reality that is based on a very limited set of cultural experiences.

What is cultural diversity competence?

A practitioner's level of awareness, knowledge, and interpersonal skills needed to function effectively in a pluralistic society and to intervene on behalf of clients from diverse backgrounds.

What is ethnicity?

A sense of identity that stems from common ancestry, history, nationality, religion, and race.

Why is one of the major challenges facing mental health professionals understanding the complex role cultural diversity and similarity play in therapeutic work?

Clients and counselors bring a wide variety of attitudes, values, culturally learned assumptions, biases, beliefs, and behaviors to the therapeutic relationship.

What are racial microaggressions?

Commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults toward people of other races.

What is social justice counseling?

Involves the empowerment of individuals and family systems to better express their needs as well as to advocate on their behalf to address inequities and injustices they encounter in their community and in society at large.

How does cultural competence involve having an understanding of how social systems operate with respect to the treatment of culturally diverse groups?

It entails understanding the impact of systemic forces such as racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, and ableism on the psychosocial development of individuals.

Why should the counselor acknowledge the wall and decrease the cultural distance between the counselor and client?

It is evident in cross-cultural encounters is that the cultural differences between counselor and client, when they are not fully appreciated or understood, can be a significant impediment to the counseling process.

Why may some culturally encapsulated helpers mistakenly assume that a lack of assertiveness is a sign of dysfunctional behavior that should be changed?

Labeling behavior dysfunctional reflects the counselor's value orientation and also may result in microaggressions.

Why has home-based therapy has been used extensively with ethnic minority clients and their families?

Many people in the community do not trust traditional mental health professionals. Making a home visit with these clients can be a way to get a firsthand view of their home, rituals, neighborhood, community, and support system.

What is a microinsult?

Microinsults are rude and insensitive comments that demean a person's heritage and identity.

What is a microinvalidation?

Microinvalidations are characterized by communications that negate, exclude, or nullify the thoughts, feelings, or realities of a person.

Gallardo, Johnson, Parham, and Carter assert that integrating culturally responsive practices with more traditional models of therapy is...

Of major importance when we consider the diverse client populations that mental health professionals serve.

What is unintentional racism?

Often subtle, indirect, and outside our conscious awareness; this can be the most damaging and insidious form of racism.

What are stereotypes?

Oversimplified and uncritical generalizations about individuals who are identified as belonging to a specific group.

Why are the ethical and cultural issues of disability are of concern, especially for those who do not have a voice to express themselves due to cognitive or communication deficits and for those with severe psychiatric disabilities?

People who lack the mental capacity to consent to their medical or mental health treatment, or those not capable of handling their financial affairs, are particularly vulnerable and are easily manipulated by others.

What is color blindness?

People who say they are color blind give the impression that those who benefit from racial privilege are closing their eyes to the experiences of others and do not acknowledge the privileges they automatically receive as a product of their race.

What are microaggressions?

Persistent verbal, behavioral, and environmental assaults, insults, and invalidations that often occur subtly and are difficult to identify.

What is cultural empathy?

Pertains to therapists' awareness of their clients' worldviews, which are acknowledged in relationship to therapists' awareness of their own personal biases.

Why may traditional approaches to counseling theory and skills may be inappropriate and ineffective with some groups?

Attention must be given to how socioeconomic factors, sexism, heterosexism, and racism influence a client's worldview.

What is culture-centered counseling?

A three-stage developmental sequence, from multicultural awareness to knowledge and comprehension to skills and applications. The individual's or group's culture plays a central role in understanding their behavior in context.

Many cultural expressions are subject to misinterpretation, including:

Appropriate personal space, eye contact, hand-shaking, dress, formality of greeting, perspective on time, and so forth.

What is racism?

Behavior that, solely because of race or culture, denies access to opportunities or privileges to members of one racial or cultural group while perpetuating access to opportunities and privileges to members of another racial or cultural group.

Many men-tal health professionals assume that it is important for the individual to become a self-actualizing person. Therefore...

Counselors may focus on self-actualization for the individual without regard for the impact of the individual's change on the significant people in that person's life or the impact of those significant people on the client.

How can cultural conflict occur between the values inherent in traditional approaches to counseling and the values of culturally diverse groups?

Counselors who operate from culturally biased views of mental health and who use intervention strategies that are not congruent with the values of culturally diverse people perpetuate forms of injustice and institutional racism.

How can cultural traditions contribute to the underutilization of traditional psychotherapeutic services by clients from diverse groups?

Cultural beliefs and norms may stop some people from seeking professional help when faced with a problem.

What is cultural pluralism?

Cultural pluralism is a perspective that recognizes the complexity of cultures and values the diversity of beliefs and values.

What is culture?

Culture, interpreted broadly, is associated with a racial or ethnic group and gender, age, religion, spirituality, socioeconomic status, physical capacity or disability, and affectional or sexual orientation.

What are The Multicultural and Social Justice Counseling Competencies?

Developed by the Association for Multicultural Counseling and Development (AMCD), it provides a framework for effective delivery of services to diverse client populations.

Why is it critical to develop an understanding of our personal and cultural values and beliefs and to examine our personal assumptions, biases, and values?

For example, if we value autonomy and independence, yet have never reflected on or examined our own values, assumptions, and biases, we may inadvertently impose this value on a client who prizes interdependence and collectivism.

What is multicultural counseling?

From this perspective, counseling is a helping intervention and process that defines contextual goals consistent with the life experiences and cultural values of clients, balancing the importance of individualism versus collectivism in assessment, diagnosis, and treatment.

What is heterosexism?

Heterosexism is a worldview and a value system that can undermine the healthy functioning of the sexual orientations, gender identities, and behaviors of LGBT individuals.

What is diversity?

Individual differences on a number of variables that can potentially put clients at risk for discrimination based on age, gender, gender identity, race, ethnicity, culture, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, disability, language, or socioeconomic status.

Why is the foundational principle in counseling people with disabilities is treat the person first rather than treat the disability?

Practitioners may feel compelled to "treat the disability," or the person's deficits. This would be considered working within the biomedical model of disease, disability, and illness. A culturally competent practitioner acting in an ethical manner would embrace and acknowledge the individual's abilities rather than disabilities.

Why should practitioners respect the roles of family members and the community structures, hierarchies, values, and beliefs?

Providers should identify resources in the client's family and the larger community and use them in delivering culturally sensitive services.

With the increasing number of culturally diverse clients seeking counseling, it is recommended that all counseling students, regardless of their racial or ethnic background...

Receive training in multicultural counseling and therapy (MCT).

What is social justice?

Social justice moves beyond cultural awareness and focuses on active support and advocacy, including promoting equality and justice for underserved and oppressed groups of people.

Why do counselors need to realize that cultural forces may be operating when clients are slow to disclose personal details?

Some clients may view self-disclosure and interpersonal warmth as inappropriate in a professional relationship with an authority figure.

In 1975 the American Psychological Association recommended that psychologists actively work to remove the stigma that had been attached to homosexuality by...

Stopped labeling homosexuality, a sexual orientation in which people seek emotional and sexual relationships with same-gendered individuals, as a form of mental illness.

What are the Multicultural and Social Justice Counseling Competencies (MSJCC)?

The MSJCC calls for counselors to address issues of power, privilege, and oppression that affect clients.

What is cultural racism?

The belief that one group's history, way of life, religion, values, and traditions are superior to others.

Traditional therapeutic approaches tend to stress directness and assertiveness, yet in some cultures directness is perceived as rudeness and something to be avoided. Thus...

The counselor could assume that this lack of directness is evidence of pathology, or at least a lack of assertiveness, rather than a sign of respect.

Why is the "client advocate" relevant for clients who do not have a voice for themselves due to cognitive, communication, or psychiatric disabilities?

The disability community more than other groups is prey to manipulation, wrongdoing, and human rights violations. Thus client advocate is a natural role for the counselor, but counselors must be mindful to approach clients with disabilities with empathy and not sympathy.

What is cultural diversity?

The spectrum of differences that exists among groups of people with definable and unique cultural backgrounds.

If practitioners fail to integrate these diversity factors into their practice...

They are infringing on the client's cultural autonomy and basic human rights.

Why are counselors faced with various clinical and ethical issues in working with lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT+) people?

This work needs to include a recognition of the societal factors that contribute to oppression and discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

Why do many White Americans have difficulty acknowledging race-related issues?

To accept the racial reality of [people of color] inevitably means confronting one's unintentional complicity in the perpetuation of racism.

Individuals with chronic medical, physical, and mental disabilities represent the largest minority and disadvantaged group in the United States. Thus...

To serve this growing population, counselors must acquire unique cultural attributes that are foundational in cultivating an ethical, competent, multicultural practice.

Why must counselors examine their own views regarding heterosexuality, racism, and sexism to better understand and deal with any biases they may have toward working with LGBT clients?

Unless mental health providers become conscious of their own assumptions and possible counter-transference, they may project their misconceptions and their fears onto their clients.

Duran and colleagues (2008) claim that Western (individualistic) counseling interventions have at times been...

Used to promote social control and conformity rather than the psychological well- being of people in diverse groups.

Why does becoming a culturally competent clinician involves acknowledging that we bring our cultural biases, assumptions, stereotypes, etc. to our work with clients?

When we recognize our cultural biases and assumptions, we are less likely to act against the best interests of clients from diverse groups and backgrounds.

How can the complex and multilayered nature of issues pertaining to culture leave a clinician feeling overwhelmed and tempted to ignore or oversimplify the presenting issues?

White helpers from privileged backgrounds have expressed the attitude that clients from racial and ethnic groups are unresponsive to psychological intervention and lack the motivation to change, which is labeled as "resistance."

A counselor's economic privilege might lead to misunderstanding in the following ways:

・Assuming clients from lower socioeconomic status groups are less intelligent, less effective as parents, or less educated ・Labeling clients as resistant or unmotivated if they are not able to arrive for appointments on time, are absent from sessions, or are unable to pay for sessions. ・Challenging clients to take steps to improve their economic conditions without addressing or validating sociocultural restrictions that affect a client's disadvantaged position in society.

The Association for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Issues in Counseling (ALGBTIC, 2008) has developed a set of competencies for counselors in training to help them examine their personal biases and values pertaining to sexual orientation, including:

・Counselors seek consultation or supervision to ensure that their own biases or knowledge deficits do not negatively influence their relationships with LGBT clients. ・Counselors strive to understand how their own sexual orientation and gender identity influences the counseling process. ・Counselors understand that attempting to change the sexual orientation or gender identity of LGBT individuals is not supported by research and is unethical. ・Competent counselors recognize the societal prejudice and discrimination experienced by LGBT individuals and assist them in overcoming internalized negative attitudes toward their sexual and gender identities.

What is a culturally encapsulated counselor?

・Shows insensitivity to cultural variations among individuals. ・Defines reality according to one set of cultural assumptions. ・Is trapped in one way of thinking that resists adaptation and rejects alternatives. ・Fails to evaluate other viewpoints and makes little attempt to accommodate the behavior of others. ・Accepts unreasoned assumptions without proof or ignores proof because that might disconfirm one's assumptions.