Developing Multicultural Competency
Previous modules and discussions have highlighted the importance of cultural diversity and multicultural issues in clinical mental health counseling (CMHC). You have learned the value of examining human growth and development within a multicultural context that involves using multicultural counseling and techniques. Because we all belong to multiple cultural groups based on aspects such as race/ethnicity, religion, sexual/affectional orientation, gender, geographic location, language, and socioeconomic status, many believe that all counseling is multicultural. Given today’s changing social, political, and cultural climate, becoming a culturally competent counselor is paramount for the success of an ethically responsible professional. One important step in developing multicultural competence is ongoing self-reflection and personal awareness.
Personal awareness begins with an in-depth look at your personal core values, morals, beliefs, and past experiences. Being aware of how these issues collectively shape your perceptions about life, people and their problems, and what’s right or wrong or good or bad can make the difference in whether you practice ethically and responsibly or recklessly, potentially putting your clients in harm’s way. Understanding your culture and examining your cultural beliefs is a prerequisite to developing the multicultural competence needed to respect human diversity.
Tasks:
In a minimum of 200 words, post to the Discussion Area your response to the following:
- Discuss how your cultural beliefs, values, morals, and past experiences could be a challenge when you counsel clients from diverse backgrounds.
- Describe your plan to overcome the challenges identified above.
- As part of your plan, indicate if your challenges require improvement in the area of self-awareness, knowledge, or skills.
- Explain how the learning from this module will contribute to your professional growth as a new counselor-in-training.
- Your discussion should clearly reflect your thoughtful and logical analysis of the information.
Support your rationale and analysis by using at least two resources from professional literature in your response. Professional literature may include peer-reviewed journal articles you can access through the NLU online library resources; relevant textbooks; and websites created by professional organizations, agencies, or institutions (websites ending in .edu or .gov).
Be sure to read all of your classmates’ original posts and respond to more than two of your classmates’ posts. Your responses should be substantive, meaning they should encourage further dialogue and discussion, encourage your classmates to think about other aspects of the topic, compare your response to your classmates’ responses, or ask a relevant question, to better assist you with your understanding. Responses such as “I like/I agree” or “I don’t like/I don’t agree” are not complete enough.
Your discussion posts and all written assignments should reflect graduate-level writing skills and appropriate use of APA style, including in-text citations and references.
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