Counseling and Psychotherapy: Ethnic and Cultural Differences

Abstract

Scholars and mental health professionals have argued that racial–cultural issues are obstacles for those seeking help. When available, cross-cultural counseling has focused on misunderstanding client health beliefs and cultural customs, practitioners' historical, social, and political unfamiliarly of discrimination, professional cultures, biased theoretical models, and failure to create realistic understandings of members of racial–cultural groups in the USA. Recognizing the importance of meeting the needs for all who seek mental health services, cross-cultural scholars and educators have been providing direction in cross-cultural psychology research, practice, and training. Competency guidelines and ethical and professional mandates have come from these efforts. Unfortunately, emanating from a cultural pluralism perspective, cross-cultural psychology has often resulted in overgeneralized and homogenized group stereotypes without attention to within group variation and individual differences. A transition from cross-cultural towards socially constructivist multicultural psychology has been gaining momentum that shifts learning from cognitively perceived culture-specific group norms to an integrated cognitive-affective racial-cultural identity perspective that includes social, historical, and political frameworks. Understanding personal racial and cultural identities and developing self-acceptance as the means for respectfully and competently working with people from all racial-cultural groups has become the primary and necessary prerequisites for developing multicultural competence in the twenty-first century.