Barriers To Multicultural Counselling

2224 Words9 Pages
This assignment aims to evaluate barriers that may arise between the counsellor and culturally diverse clients. To begin with, a brief overview of culture and multiculturism will be provided. Subsequently this assignment will go on to review, in detail, the barriers which might arise in multicultural counselling. This will include arguments regarding language differences, the counsellor and client’s prejudices, biases and diverse culture backgrounds, religious beliefs, and ethical responsibilities. Personal opinion and reflection of these barriers will be concisely discussed. Concluding this assignment will be a discussion of how barriers between counsellor and culturally diverse clients may be overcome during the counselling process in addition to the limitations of multicultural counselling in the present counselling arena. Culture is valued as “a sociological and anthropological concept. It denotes how people live their lives through their particular beliefs and social practices, including religion and family customs,” (Palmer & Laungani, 2009). Culture affects how people think, feel, and behave in a society. It is reflected in the learned or shared beliefs, values, attitudes and behavioural characteristics of an individual. (Ahmed & Bhugra, 2006). Theories of social behaviour and personality are usually culture specific because theorists understand experiences in terms of their own life events and times. Their observations of the world around them are subjective of their native culture, which may act as blinders. They are generally incapable of recognizing or understanding cultural differences outside their cultural norm, “the recognition of this problem contributed to the emergence of cross-cultural counselling in the last quarter of a century,” (Lago, 2006). Hays (1996) argues nine cultural influences through the ADRESSING model that counsellors need to
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