Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
culture impact on behavior
culture impact on behavior
cultural diversity good and bad
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: culture impact on behavior
The therapeutic alliance, or working alliance, may be defined as the quality of involvement between therapist and client through task teamwork, mutual goal settings and strong rapport established (Orlinsky, Ronnestad & Willutzki, 2004). Indeed, the therapist’s role is an important contributing factor to the therapeutic relationship as a positive working alliance will greatly be determined by the skills they portray (Ornstein & Ganzer, 2005). Achieving a therapeutic alliance depends largely upon the therapist’s ability to communicate emphatic understanding of the client’s feelings and belief systems. However, disparities in assessing clients may arise when both clients and therapists belong to different cultures due to the lack of understanding …show more content…
It has been suggested that processes within psychodynamic therapies are integral to the therapy experience may be affected by cultural differences. People being treated by a health professional of a dominant culture may develop a transference based on the cultural divide generated by conflict between two cultures (Benson & Thistlethwaite, 2008). Therapist may be deemed as symbolizing past traumatic experiences or socialization that the client or the client's identity group had encountered with the therapist's identity group (Helms & Cook, 1999). This suggests a negative transference that is derived from the patient's expectations of the therapist, based on the therapist's cultural group. Clients may face ‘cultural traumatization’ as they fear being oppressed by the therapist. Similarly, cultural-based countertransference refers to therapists’ culturally held assumptions, stereotypes, norms, beliefs, and values; attitudes related to race, ethnicity, and gender (Fauth, 2006). Therapist may be responding to the client’s transference and/or coping with their individual reactions that have nothing to do with the client but are triggered by the client’s appearance or other aspects of the therapy process. Thus, a lack of awareness of culture-based reactions may significantly impact therapists’ ability to provide …show more content…
Client and therapist are at risk of communication breakdowns and the accuracy of assessment will be affected due to the language and cultural gap (Cravener, 1992). Most cultures have explicit or implicit taboos about relationships and their confidentiality – people are less likely to talk about trauma if there is a cultural gap causing them to fear being misunderstood or judged because of their experiences – which occurs mainly among Asian cultures like the Chinese or Cantonese population (Joice & Walker, 2010). Russell (1988) surfaced the importance of being sensitive to two related psycholinguistic phenomena such as the detachment effect and code switching. The detachment effect refers to phenomenon of limited expression of affect and reduced access to developmental events between languages for people who speak more than one language (Cravener, 1992). Events that occurred before clients speak the English language may be forgotten or the inability of client to express emotionally significant events that happened in childhood accurately in English. Rozensky and Gomez (1983) highlighted that bilingual clients present affective communication difficulties due to a split between both affective experiences and developmental issues that took place in the mother tongue and
“Cultural competence is the ability to engage in actions or create conditions that maximize the optimal development of client and client systems” (Sue & Sue, 2013, p. 49). Multicultural competence includes a counselor to be aware of his or her biases, knowledge of the culture they are evaluating, and skills to evaluate a client with various backgrounds (Sue & Sue, 2013). Client assessment involves gathering information pertaining to the client’s condition. Making a culturally responsive diagnosis involves using the DSM-IV-TR axis (Hays, 2008). Following the axis backwards is ideal to discovering the client’s diagnosis, understanding the client’s ADDRESSING outline will help to come to a closer resolution for a diagnosis.
Counselors today face the task of how to appropriately counsel multicultural clients. Being sensitive to cultural variables can be conceptualized as holding a cultural lens to human behavior and making allowances for the possibility of cultural influence. However, to avoid stereotyping, it is important that the clinician recognize the existence of within-group differences as well as the influence of the client’s own personal culture and values (Furman, Negi, Iwamoto, Shukraft, & Gragg, 2009). One’s background is not always black or white and a counselor needs to be able to discern and adjust one’s treatment plan according to their client.
Race and ethnicity can influence a client’s experience of self and others in a variety of ways. A client’s personal race and ethnicity can influence his or her experience within the context of therapy through the set of beliefs he or she brings into the room. This set of beliefs and customs influences how he or she views therapy and whether there is motivation to be there. If the client’s culture does not usually seek therapy for their problems, or even believe in mental illness, it is likely the client will have apprehensions about trusting or speaking to the clinician. If the clinician is not aware of this possibility, the clinician may wonder why the client is in therapy if he or she will not speak or allow rapport to be built. A responsible clinician will take this into consideration.
It is pertinent to study the history of racial oppression when preparing to counsel a client from an ethnic minority if the counselor is from the majority culture. The problem is it would be difficult to examine the complete history and would be highly impossible especially in a short time. However, a therapist can gain knowledge of some of the essentials of history such as, religion, family structure, and background information. If the therapist or counselor is uncomfortable counseling these individuals he/or she can refer the client to someone who has more knowledge or has the same cultural background as the client. For instance, a therapist must become aware of the sociopolitical dynamics that form not only their clients’ views, but their own as well. Racial and cultural dynamics may interfere into the helping process and cause misdiagnosis, confusion, pain and reinforcement of biases and prejudices towards their client.
What culturally relevant interactions (discuss 2) could the nurse implement to facilitate the development of a therapeutic rapport with an African American client?
Culture can be defined as behaviors exhibited by certain racial, religious, social or ethnic groups. Some factors in which culture may vary include: family structure, education, and socioeconomic status (Kodjo, 2009). Some may think cultural competence is something that has an end point, however, when the big picture is seen, it is a learning process and journey. From the writer’s perspective, the client-therapist relationship can be challenging. Culturally competent therapists must realize that behaviors are shaped by an individual’s culture. Many changes are taking place within the United States cultural makeup. Therapists and healthcare professionals are being challenged to provide effective and sensitive care for patients and their families. This type of culturally sensitive care requires the professional to be open and seek understanding in the patients diverse belief systems (Kodjo, 2009).
Remember, self-reflection is vital to becoming a culturally-competent counselor. The counselor should consistently re-examine their worldview and personal beliefs about diverse individuals and other cultures. The idea is for the counselor to explore their own prejudices, emotions, and preconceived notions of those that differ from themselves. Remaining curious and willing to learn about culturally distinct groups is a practical way of working effectively with varied clients in counseling and understanding what barriers and prejudices are typical in their
programs, particularly with treatment initiation and retention. Hiring qualified staff of the same ethnic background may dramatically increase patient access and initiation into treatment. In addition, if the treatment provider is not of the same ethnic background, it is best that he or she take on an inquisitive role and not make any ethnocentric assumptions based on his own cultural heritage. The goat of the clinician should be to uncover social cultural issues that will affect acceptance, retention, and ultimately, treatment outcome". (Patrick Abbott, MD and Duane M. Chase. n.d para,
Smith, T. B., Rodríguez, M. D., & Bernal, G. (2011). Culture. In J. C. Norcross (Ed.), Psychotherapy relationships that work (2nd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press.
For clients who express their experiences for the first time in counseling, it can be a powerful force to help them heal. It is important for the counselor to pay close attention to the person’s body language, affect and tone. The counselor must consider the possible scenarios that may occur in the first session. Cultural aspects of the client must be considered. From the client’s perspective, the first session is an important session, even if the first session is mostly an information gathering session. The client may have experiences much trauma in their life, never being able to trust a person with their closest feelings. This is why it is very important to establish rapport and trust in...
It is interesting to note according to Raskin et al. ( 2011), “Our basic practice [client centered therapy] remains true to the core conditions no matter who our client may be. We also assert that our ability to form an initial therapeutic relationship depends on our own openness to and appreciation of respect for all kinds of difference” (p. 183). I believe that the cultural diversity that CCT maintains is important in a multiplicity open therapeutic environment. The implications for a non discriminatory form of therapy are that it can be used across populations. This allows for broader use of this theory and the chances for positive outcomes is increased because the availability.
In the clinical setting, nurses are believed to spend the most time with patients. This involves regularly dealing with people coming from different ethnicities and with different cultural practices and beliefs (Brown & Edwards, 2012). Given this cultural diversity, every patient may have his/her own cultural beliefs and practices regarding his/her own health and its treatment which can be similar or different to those ...
The assertion has appeared repeatedly in the literature that it is unethical for counselors to provide clinical services to clients who are culturally different from themselves if the counselors are not competent to work effectively with these clients (e.g., Corey, Corey, & Callanan, 2003; Herlihy & Watson, 2003; Lee, 2002; Pedersen, Draguns, Lonner, & Trimble, 2002; Remley & Herlihy, 2005; Vontress, 2002). Historically, however, counselors have been slow to recognize a connection between multicultural competence and ethical behavior. Multiculturalism and ethical standards both emerged during the 1960s as separate strands of development within the counseling profession. Multicultural counseling evolved from a growing awareness that discrepancies between counselor and client were resulting in ineffective service delivery and early termination of treatment for ethnic minority clients (Atkinson, Morton, & Sue, 1998” (p.99). Prior to this form of counseling, counseling was most effective for Caucasians. However, as time pasted and theories for minorities improved the code of ethics began to improve as
There are different perspectives, however, which put stress on various aspects of culture and try to identify its boundaries and its substitutes. Some regard culture as separate entity from demographic factors, some point out acculturation as one of the obstacles, which makes culture difficult to identify, some show how an intimate and meaningful relationship between a counsellor and a culturally different client to be established. In this essay I will be discussing what the different concepts of understanding of culture in Counselling are, by examining different authors and perspectives and evaluating their strengths and weaknesses.
Insofar as therapists and patients have different reference groups, all encounters may be considered cross-cultural. If this perspective is endorsed, then one may indeed consider cultural competence to be essential to overall clinical competence. Therapists should strive for cultural competency by acquiring both generic and specific cultural knowledge and skill sets. Various generic cultural issues may occur at each phase of psychotherapy, and specific cultural knowledge guides their resolution.