Multicultural & Social Justice Counseling Competence

Taiye Selasi: Don't Ask Where I'm From, Ask Where I'm a Local

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Multicultural Counseling Competence

In this video Darald Wing Sue discusses the importance of developing multicultural competence in counseling practice. He describes multicultural competence as an ongoing process of becoming aware of, examining, and confronting our biases related to client identity factors (e.g., race/ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation). He says all counselors will, "commit blunders, the important thing is how you recover not how you cover up".

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Four Approaches to Counseling

In this video Dr. Ratts discusses four different approaches taken to treat mental health concerns.

  1. Medical/biological approach (Bio) most closely aligned with psychiatry.
  2. Intrapsychic approach (Bio-Psycho) focused on understanding and becoming more aware of experiences, feelings, thoughts, behaviors, beliefs, and values. The intrapsychic approach is most closely aligned with psychoanalytic, cognitive behavioral, and humanistic existential approaches.
  3. Multicultural approach (Bio-Psycho-Social) focused on how clients cultures and contexts shape their ways of being and understanding. Explores how biological, psychological, and social factors influence clients problems.
  4. Social Justice approach (Bio-Psycho-Social-Advocacy) Explores how biological, psychological, and social factors influence clients' problems and then identifies ways to intervene at multiple levels (e.g.,interpersonal, intrapersonal, institutional, community, public policy, and international/global levels).

Playback problems? This video is available on YouTube at youtu.be/d2LMU47cDSQ



Multicultural and Social Justice Counseling Competencies

Click here to download the Multicultural and Social Justice Counseling Competencies (Ratts, Singh, Nassar-McMillan, Butler, & McCullough, 2015). This framework is designed to assist counselors with implementing multiculturally competent and socially just ways of being, understanding, and intervening with diverse clients.