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Relevance of Family Counseling in Multicultural Counseling
Family therapy has since been a fundamental process for psychotherapy. It uses conceptual frameworks developed such as the study of greatness and organizational dynamics to apply formal interventions that help families and individuals within these families to deal with various problems. A French study conducted in 2004 by the French government showed that family counseling was the most effective therapeutic method after cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). The French study was a meta-analysis of more than a hundred studies, which evaluated the presumed or proven effectiveness of family therapy. The review proved or presumed that family therapy is more effective at treating disorders such as bipolar, alcohol dependency, anorexia, and schizophrenia. Family counseling as a process is effective because it combines different strategies and techniques to resolve problems. The most important aspect of family counseling is that the family members are coached towards perceiving their importance in the problem resolution and that the patterns they create as members of the family are important in facilitating problem resolution. As a process, it focuses on sustenance of the solution rather than identifying the cause. These make family therapy an important method for psychotherapy.
Studies that have been conducted on multicultural counseling suggest that the ethnic minority groups are often least likely to use or request counseling services. One reason for this is that there is ethnocentrism whereby the values of the majority white population alienate those from minority groups. To apply a multicultural approach to psychotherapy or counseling, one would need to assume that the style appropriate for the majority group is relevant to the minority groups, which is not the case. Family therapy as a method of counseling thus provides the psychotherapist with a way to access the cultures and values of the minority group and understand the differences at individual and family level, which are essential in driving solutions. Family therapy as a subject has had huge interest from researchers. However, the application of family therapy to identify its applicability to multicultural counseling has been the subject of little research because of implicit and explicit assumptions that cultures are complex and difficult to learn. By analyzing what is currently known about family therapy and the appreciation of cultural diversity, the stage will be set to understand how family therapy is relevant to multicultural counseling.
Multicultural therapies like ethnic family therapy recognize the multiple worldviews and diversity of values among clientele. Moreover, multicultural therapies avoid problems associated with decontextualization and the ignorance of politics and power structures in people's lives (Comas-Diaz, 2014). Therapists working in a diverse environment do need to develop cultural competence to serve their communities. Cultural competence requires self-awareness and recognition of one's own worldview, biases, and attitudes. Likewise, cultural competence leads
Christian counseling has become an important treatment modality for a growing number of health care practitioners and patients across the country in recent years. Introduced during the early 1980s, Christian counseling advocates integrating religious practices and beliefs founded on religious traditions with psychotherapeutic techniques to provide an optimal approach to helping people cope with a wide range of personal problems and family issues. The purpose of this study is to
NCFR The National Council on Family Relations places a high degree of emphasis on the development of quality policy and programs. Methodical and research-based program development in particularly important, evidenced by the tenth major content area on Family Life Education Methodology (NCFR, 2011). This content area refers to program effectiveness, measured by various established qualitative and quantitative means. It also refers to program progress and effectiveness specific to target populations. Education
Counseling Theory: Postmodern Approaches Counseling orientation has experienced paradigm shifts over the decades from traditional pioneering theories such as cognitive theory, psychoanalysis, and humanism to the postmodernist theory. The rationale for the progression to postmodernism has been the evolving notion of a multiplicity of reality, a shift from modernist empiricism to constructivism (Shurts, 2015). The traditional counseling theorist considered counseling as a true mapping of the psychic phenomena depicting an accurate
It would be agreeable that the growth of multicultural focus is something that has remained a long journey towards our present understanding of the topic. The path towards our contemporary multiculturalism remains a distinct area of psychology that developed some years ago. The historical development shows clearly that there have been different individuals and thinkers who have focused on the ethnic associations and issues related to human interactions (Cauce,
(Byrd and Byrd, 1993) The process of healing can be found, for example, in Luke 13:10-17, which refers to a woman who has been crippled for eighteen years. The healing takes place by the laying of hands on the women by Christ. In John 5:1-18 we have the story of a seriously ill man placed at pool waiting for healing. This episode stresses the importance of listening to Christ's instruction and