Relevance of Family Counseling in Multicultural Counseling

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.