Counseling a Client from Another Culture

The United States is the largest furnace. Wherever you go, we are surrounded by a colorful culture. Immigrants who arrived in this country today are trying to absorb and maintain their identities. For example, my mother Elizabeth was born in Italy and came to the United States at the age of eleven. When my mother attended school, the mentoring room advised the adopted parents to remove clothing, jewelry or personal items that were inconsistent with American culture at the time.

Over the past thirty years consultant scholars and practitioners have argued that multicultural capabilities are the central focus of consulting environments that are effective cooperation and cultural correspondence with diverse customers. Counselors and clients bring diverse positions, privileges, and alienation to treatment relationships, as well as cultural values, beliefs, prejudices that counselors need to participate. In addition, customers are increasingly looking for unfair consultation issues that lead to unhealthy risk factors.

This may be too simple, but multicultural counseling is defined as how expert consultants work with customers of different cultural groups to influence the interactions that occur in consulting relationships. This definition has been extended to include differences in religion and spirituality, sexual orientation, gender, age and maturity, socio-economic class, family history, and even geographical location. The first step in effective multicultural counseling is to identify and recognize these differences between counselors and clients.

Multicultural counseling occurs when counselors and their customers come from different cultural groups. However, the cultural identity itself is not only defined by the human skin's color, geographical location, or their ethnic groups, but may also include various factors. Sex, religious beliefs, socio-economic status, and sexual orientation are identity factors that cultural consultants need to be aware of not only customer's perspective but also cultural identity. (Middleton et al., 2011)