Abstract
There is a strong tradition of attention to relationship factors in the field of counseling. The research on the importance of the relationship and adapting to client factors continues to grow, supporting the importance of professional multicultural competence. The field of counseling, specifically within the United States context, has focused on Multicultural Counseling Competencies with more recent emphasis on social justice through the Multicultural and Social Justice Counseling Competencies. Within these competencies, spirituality and religion are mentioned as multicultural components to consider as potentially salient to clients. Yet, there has been less emphasis on ways to adapt counseling to a client’s spirituality and religion compared to other multicultural components of one’s identity, such as race, gender, and culture. Historically, a lack of training, fear of causing offense, or concerns about influencing clients, resulted in clients’ spirituality and religion being overlooked far too often in counseling. Despite this tendency, recent clinical evidence on relational responsiveness identifies the adaptation of counseling to a client’s spirituality and religion as highly effective. In this article, the authors discuss how adapting counseling to a client’s spirituality and religion, in relation to all multicultural factors salient to the client, enhances relational responsiveness and treatment effectiveness. The authors also discuss the implications for training, supervision, and practice.
Highlights
The foundation of the counseling process is identified throughout the literature as the therapeutic relationship
It is imperative that counselors are trained to competently include all client multicultural factors including religion and spirituality into the counseling process
30 years since the original Multicultural Counseling Competencies (MCC) were developed by Sue et al (1992), counselor education has seen much progress as many counselors have been trained in the beliefs/attitudes, knowledge, and skills originally proposed through the MCC (Gonzalez-Voller et al 2020)
Summary
The foundation of the counseling process is identified throughout the literature as the therapeutic relationship. Research on the counseling relationship recognizes the essential inclusion of client multicultural factors in the therapeutic process to create strong bonds. The multicultural factors of religion and spirituality are often overlooked or glossed over within the counseling context because of apprehension around counselor training, influence, and competence on the inclusion of religion and spirituality in the counseling process. Religion and spirituality are identified as protective factors for clients. It is imperative that counselors are trained to competently include all client multicultural factors including religion and spirituality into the counseling process. Adapting counseling to all multicultural factors salient to a client, including spirituality and religion, enhances the counseling relationship and treatment outcomes
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