PART ONE QUESTIONS
Question1: Effect of culture on a therapist
A fundamental assumption of effective counseling and psychotherapy is the ability to acknowledge basic personal beliefs, the way we understand other people’s culture and also the limits created by our culture of the capacity to comprehend others entirely. Therefore, as a therapist, I need to know my cultural background alongside worldview first before making an attempt to understand as well as offer assistance to clients from diverse cultural set up (Amerson, 2010). The most important elements of culture that may have an effect on my job as a therapist includes personal life philosophies, individual reasoning structures recognition in addition to comprehending the impact of communication. Hence, lack of understanding as a counselor may hinder my intervention effectiveness. For instance, lack of self-awareness as a counselor may make it difficult for me to admit that white cultural customs, and their values, are not the basis for judging my clients.
Question2: Discrimination experience
I have experienced racism discrimination at preschool due to my Asian culture. Fellow students called me various racism names, pushing me around whenever I met them on my way to the classroom, and some even told me that I should go back to my home country. This had been followed by religious discrimination because of my Asian background since most of the individuals from my culture have been associated with terrorism. All over the world, mild East Asians have been linked to a terrorist attack as well as brutal killing. So far I have been in European as well as American countries, and I have experienced their cultural practice too. For example, the black American are associated with slang language and gang activities. They are occasionally called niggers by white Americans (Brown, 2009). This is because most of them have grown up in ghetto set up. For many earlier years, black Americans have been associated with poverty and they were supposed to submit to the white Americans, their female counterparts were being sexually harassed. Most of these ladies were devalued as well mistreated most of the time. Even at my preschool, teachers showed much preference to white students than other students from other races. This contributed to failing of most black American and Asian students at that time because of the unconducive learning environment (France et al., 2012).
Question3: Relating to people of different culture
Question4: Effects of Relating to people of different culture
Deciding consciously to build friendships with individuals from various cultures. This will enable me to understand the economic status, ethnical background as well as race of individuals from a different culture and cope with them fairly.
Examining my biases concerning people originating from a different culture. By writing down personal opinions about individuals from diverse culture as well as talking with them, I will be in a position to strengthen my relationship with them.
Reading articles about individuals’ various cultures as well as their historical background. This is one method of showing caring and also equipping me with background information to aid me to answer more question in different cultures.
PART TWO QUESTIONS
Question1: Racism and discrimination
In his research, Professor Alvarez (2013), re-named everyday racism as “subtle” and defined it as a commonplace discrimination forms, for example, being treated differently, being ignored or else ridiculed. Such actions when a cumulated may result in a bigger impact on a person’s mental health. Therefore, a person practicing such forms of discrimination is the one referred to as a subtle racist or else everyday racist.
Example of subtle racism
David, a black university student who reside in an apartment where the house manager told him not to stroll the apartment premises while listening to music on his earphones. Apparently his fellow residents found such act distracting. Occasionally, David shows a young white man in their apartment having a similar radio with earphones and the apartment manager never complained about the white youth. This shows an everyday racism involving treating a white individual and black person differently, even though the activity or else behavior both of them have engaged identical (Jordan, 2009). Thus based on the personal stereotype of black people, David’s neighbor were irritated by David’s act of listing to music through his earphones while they were okay watching their fellow white individual doing the same.
Question2: Significant difference in values and perception of groups with the same culture
The members of a similar group of ethnicity may vary in their attitudes as well as values because of the culture which they have grown up with. This is because culture influences how people, as well as groups, generates identifiable norms, values and the way of living which have to be transferred from one generation to another. Additionally, a significant difference in culture can be due to factors such as gender, age, geographical location as well as lifestyle (Kirmayer, 2012). Therefore, members of the similar ethnic group have to show some diversity in their values due to their interaction with other individuals from various cultural upbringings too.
PART THREE QUESTIONS
Question1: ACA and NAADAC Codes of Practice
The ACA codes of ethics have a number of primary objectives which include; to illuminate the ethical responsibilities of counselors, to create ethical principles which do serve as guidelines for client services, to support the ACA mission in addition to ethical complaints and inquiries processing for the members (ACA, 2014). By following these codes, as a counselor, I will possess a good ethical practice when providing counseling services to the clients. Some of NAADAC’s codes of ethics include; non-discrimination of the clients upon religion, race or sex, being competence when providing counseling service to the clients to promote the society interest and following both legal as well as moral standards. Additionally, there should be high confidentiality, thus, the counselor has to protect the private information of the client all the time. Under ACA codes, I will have to follow the ethical principles such as client welfare maintenance as I offer my services to them. On the other hand, within the NAADAC codes, I will maintain the competence principle because counseling professional is always founded on national standards (NAADAC, 2015).
Question2: Importance of cultural sensitivity in treatment practice
Being sensitive to various cultural influences, client backgrounds as well as beliefs as a counselor will enhance the relationship with the patients and in the long run, there will be improved in health or wellness of the patients. Cultural sensitivity will help in understanding the influence of ethnicity and race on the patient (Kirmayer, 2012). Additionally, it helps in understanding the historical factors that affect the health of the patients. Hence, planning for their treatments will be easier.
Question3: Variation in Cross-culture communication styles
Norms of communication do influence every cultural practice. Hence, forms of communication vary across the culture because it is only through the culture that rules which control how an individual listen or speak can be identified. Interpretation of communication styles also differs, for example, body movements such as posture, eye contact, gestures, smiling as well as laughing are being interpreted differently across the culture (Kumagai & Lypson, 2009). Additionally, paralanguage like infections, hesitation, silences or speaking pace does provide an opportunity for cross-cultural misinterpretation. For example, Americans from rural tend to speak louder than their urban counterparts.
Question4: Rapport building differentiation based on culture diversity
As a counselor, the most important thing is having a positive rapport with the client so that they will quickly open up during the counseling session. To build rapport with multicultural clients require different strategies such as developing a good listening skill so as to understand the story of the client. This will include the ability to understand the cultural background of the client. Another difference method that can be used is to treat clients with a lot of respect. By valuing the client’s culture without showing any biases, a good rapport will be generated with easily (McLeod, 2013). Additionally, by showing a lot of competencies, a good relationship can be built on cultural difference. This will help in winning the client’s trust.
Question5: Reasons for differential treatment methods
In counseling, there are different clients with different problems every day. Hence, they will require different treatment methods. Therefore, the basis of a given treatment method will depend on the clients ability to open up by telling the counselor everything that affects them.
Question5 (a) Sources of potential counselor on cultural basis
One of the sources of the potential counselor is the Association for AMCD journal. This association permitted a document which provides a general outline of the requirements as well as the basis for multicultural perspective in counseling. These competencies have to be adopted by counseling professions in accreditation criteria. The other sources are American Mental Health Counselors Association as well as National Board of Counselors journals (Jordan, 2009).
Question6: Resources on cultural diversity
There are various resources that can help me as a counselor to become more informed on cultural diversity. The first resource is my fellow students. By interacting with students from different cultural background, I will be able to learn their culture and find out how to build a stronger relationship with them. The second resources are the books and articles from the library which are rich with cultural diversity topics. These books will help me to learn about different cultural backgrounds and their values. Finally, by visiting the different geographical region with various cultural practices, I will be in a position to find out how different people do their activities within their cultures (France et al., 2012).
Question7: Application of social-cultural diversity as a counselor
I will have to understand my clients as a counselor by listening to them more and put myself in their situation during the counseling session. I will be open minded to accept any client no matter the cultural background and be in a position to learn the variety of cultural practices as well as values or beliefs. I will also build a positive rapport with my client because it will facilitate trust development between my clients and me (Sue et al., 2009). This will enable me to be competency in my profession as a counselor.
References
ACA. (2014). Code of Ethics. Pdf
Alvarez, A. N., & Shin, J. (2013). Asian Americans and Racism: Mental Health and Health Consequences. In Handbook of Asian American Health (pp. 155-172). Springer New York.
Amerson, R. (2010). The impact of service-learning on cultural competence. Nursing education perspectives, 31(1), 18-22.
Brown, L. S. (2009). Cultural competence: A new way of thinking about integration in therapy. Journal of Psychotherapy Integration, 19(4), 340.
France, M. H., Carmen Rodríguez, M., & Hett, G. G. (Eds.). (2012). Diversity, Culture and Counselling: A Canadian Perspective, 2e. Brush Education.
Joint Commission. (2010). Advancing effective communication, cultural competence, and patient-and family-centered care: A roadmap for hospitals. Joint Commission.
Jordan, J. V. (2009). Relational-cultural therapy. American Psychological Association.
Kirmayer, L. (2012). Rethinking cultural competence. Transcultural Psychiatry, 49(2), 149.
Kumagai, A. K., & Lypson, M. L. (2009). Beyond cultural competence: critical consciousness, social justice, and multicultural education. Academic Medicine, 84(6), 782-787.
McLeod, J. (2013). An introduction to counselling. McGraw-Hill Education (UK).
NAADAC. (2015). Code of Ethics. Pdf
Sue, S., Zane, N., Hall, G. C. N., & Berger, L. K. (2009). The case for cultural competency in psychotherapeutic interventions. Annual review of psychology, 60, 525.
