Multicultural Competence and Professional Counselling

Thesis statement
Multicultural competence is a necessary skill for a professional counsellor to succeed in working with mental health patients.
Introduction
Multicultural counselling refers to situations when a professional counsellor handles patients from different cultural groups and how such interaction holds the potential to interfere with what transpires in the course of their counsellor –patient relationship. The difference in culture is extended to cover differences in religion, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic class, age, geographic location and family history. Effective multicultural counselling calls for the professional to, firstly, acknowledge the existence of such differences between them and the mental health disorder patient (Faculty, 2014).
The necessary steps to attain cultural competence
How to understand and address problems in multicultural counselling setting
Acknowledging cultural differences is an effective tool that counsellors can utilize to handle patients from other cultural up-bringing. A counsellor must engage the mental health patient in such a way that the patient will not think that their difference will interfere with the counsellor’s ability to offer useful professional assistance. A counsellor may achieve rapport by expressing interest in learning more about the patient and respecting the world perspective of the patient, their means of solving problems and even their belief systems. Culturally sensitive interventions are only possible after learning of, and addressing the realities of the mental health disorder patient (Faculty, 2014).
How to identify differences in culture
The first issue that must be dealt with from the onset is the reason why a mental health patient has visited a counsellor. The classic western approach in which the counsellor seeks a direct answer is incompatible with a lot of cultures. The Western approach includes eye contact, body language and the use of open ended questions. In experience, Americans of Asian descent find such a technique lacking in politeness. Similarly, Native Americans view the approach as rather invasive. Effective counselling cannot afford to ignore the need to recognize cultural differences and to establish trust between the counsellor and the mental health disorder patient (Faculty, 2014).
The role of self
In order to become a professionally culturally competent counsellor, one must practice self reflection. You must begin by identifying your world view and the personal beliefs you hold about other people. The process is useful in revealing the prejudices you might be holding, stereotypes and beliefs about other cultures. If you wish to progress in your practice as a counsellor and successfully handle your mental health disorder patients from various cultural backgrounds, you must be willing to educate yourself about them in a productive manner. You need to allow fresh information to infiltrate your thought processes (Faculty, 2014).
The need to undertake ongoing education
One must take cognizance of the fact that professional counsellors do not hold a monopoly of information regarding every cultural context. They grow their cultural competence through a continuous learning process. As you work with more mental health patients from diverse backgrounds, your knowledge base grows too. Indeed, working with such a set of clients provides you with chances to gain new skills and insights with every new case that you encounter (Faculty, 2014).
Conclusion
According to Sue and Sue (2013), counsellor competence is attained through a process of development. Training in multicultural competency must facilitate opportunities to apply self reflective skills to deal with attitudes, behaviours, beliefs and assumptions that are biased. Reflective thinking and reflective judgement needs analysis of the same. One must understand oneself in the racial-cultural set up so as to enable them regard multiple views as necessary prerequisites for making informed and effective decisions. Reflective self analysis and consequent judgement is a product of critical thinking. Intergroup conversation, self reflection and openness are the needed ingredients in developing cultural competence. Developing self reflection in multicultural counselling training seems to assist counsellors to deal with biases of cultural nature and assumptions that are influenced by ethnic factors in directing the counselling profession to a global standard practice.



References
Faculty. (2014). Five important aspects of multicultural counselling competencies. Accessed from: http://www.delval.edu/blog/five-important-aspects-of-multicultural-counseling-competencies
Sue, D. W., & Sue, D. (2013). Counselling the culturally diverse: Theory & practice (6th ed.). New York, NY: John Wiley.