Multicultural Counseling Case Study

Historical Differences in Perspectives of Multi-Cultural Issues Repeated literature says that it is unethical for a counselor to provide services to culturally different clients if they are not culturally confident. Multicultural competence is increasingly recognized as an essential part of ethical counseling but counselors are historically slow in recognizing the connection between cultural competence and ethical behavior. There have been numerous ways to look at cultural differences between groups of people. These differences reflect the sociopolitical climate of the time, according to the authors of Introduction to Multicultural Counseling for Helping Professionals. Multiculturalism and ethical standards both emerged in the 60’s as

Etic assumes universal elements are the same across all groups in things such as discrimination, empowerment, communication, and acculturation. Emic emphasizes specific characteristics of each cultural group that can have impact on the counseling process. Early teachings in multicultural counseling focused on the emic perspective but the best approach is a mixture of both etic and emic perspectives. We must recognize that unequal treatment and discrimination affect all of us. Cultural minorities experience discrimination as much as ethnic minorities do because of the things about themselves that they can not change. Ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, disability, and even age bring many different types of prejudices and injustices to clients, counselors and the counseling

There have been many books written about culture and diversity, there has been a focus on training to be culturally competent and tools have been developed to assess competencies. There have been works on racial identity development and multicultural counseling summits have been developed as well. There are three components of multicultural competencies: awareness of self and others, knowledge and skill. Counselors are required to be aware of their own values, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors and know how they apply to a diverse client base. Counselors should not impose their beliefs on their clients as well as they need to know how their own cultural identities affect the counseling process. Counselors must actively try to understand diverse cultural backgrounds of their clients and use the skills that they have gained to work build a multicultural