An Influence Of Transcultural Awareness On Counselling

Culture is basically an intricate concept and there is barely any consensus achieved in the literature to define culture. There are many definitions of culture, and it affects the notion, values, attitudes, norms or the patterns of behaviour that the people in that society do. Culture is not customarily inherited, there is no way it existed on its own, instead is always shared by the member of its society. Out of the many definitions, Mulholland (1991), define cultures as a set of shared and enduring meaning, values and beliefs that represent or symbolize national, ethnic, or other groups and adjust to their behaviour. Culture represents the identity of the nation and it is impossible for the society if there is no culture. Culture is the foundation of the community that directs the society to the ways of living. Other than that, culture equip solutions to the vital problems that the community faced. It also emphasizes on unity and cooperation where it teaches the society to think for the whole nation and not just individuality.

Transcultural counselling believes that counselling and therapies can appear across cultures, ethnicities, nations and continents. American philosophy exports their mainstream models of counselling and psychotherapy to Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, South America, and the Pacific Rim countries. In reality, these models reject the realities of non-western thinking styles. In addition, these models violate immigrants, ethnic minorities, women, people with disabilities and different lifestyles in the United States. Also in the United States, where Asian American are under-represented in counselling and therapies and when they do seek for assistance, they tend to terminate the service prematurely.

The main challenge to this problem is the language barriers as well as their perception of therapy as irrelevant or unaccustomed to resolve mental disorders. The Chinese culture specifically has the stigma or taboo of mental disorders and associate it with shame make it even difficult for them to seek help. Eastern and Western culture for example has a vast difference in values and beliefs system thus making it one of the reasons why Chinese clients terminate therapy prematurely. Chinese values strong sense of collectivism, the centrality of the family, filial piety, hierarchical relationships, academic achievement, humility, and emotional self- control. These values play a crucial role the Chinese identity and how they make sense of the problems they are facing, also what the expectations of the therapy. It has been recognised for many years that therapies should be culturally “sensitive” or “responsive”. Mamud Baba (2015), stated that building a good therapeutic relationship should never be underestimated and time is vital in this matter. Nonetheless, careful considerations during the initial meeting of a client who belongs to a different culture need to be consider carefully. Therapist will likely be able to spot the reasons of why they needed help in the first place. Therapist need to understand how to work with particular cultural issues and attending certain cultural groups. This is due to conscious and unconscious perceptions and assumptions, such as strong religious and political beliefs will be the communication of the client.

Transcultural training, supervision and personal development is essential for therapists. When the therapist has yet to explore their own prejudice and judgment about a certain cultural groups and practices, this can result to clients terminating their therapy prematurely. Pedersen, Fukuyama, and Heath (1989) on the other hand noted that research on client, counsellor, and contextual variables obtained mixed results. The suggestion that promote the therapist to be culturally sensitive and aware to serve the client’s needs have not yet proved the effectivity. Moreover, culture oppression threat issues may arise if the culture specific techniques applied to the various culture without any attention to appropriateness of the technique to the specific client. Cultural factors for the treatment of minority clients have garnered a tremendous attention within this field, but the service being rendered to the clients remain incompetent at a certain level. Most probably it is due to the lack of bilingual and bicultural therapist in the industry, biases and stereotypes that therapist hold onto, as well as the failure of the counsellors in providing culturally responsive and sensitive forms of treatment to the client.