Counseling approaches that operate along racial, ethnic, and national lines promote a strong multicultural view and approach
Counseling aims at assisting a person to resolve problems that affect them. A trained person applies several approaches to guide a patient to overcome challenges. Counseling approaches that help understand the race, ethnicity and national background of the patient create a strong multicultural perspective. This is because the counselor must understand the national, ethnic and racial background of the patient. This helps reduce misunderstandings between the patient and the counselor. Each client is unique, and the counselor should understand the background of the client so that the problems affecting him/her can be resolved easily. Therefore, this approach helps the counselor to avoid assumptions about the life of the client (Miller, 2012).
A classic mistake that a crisis interventionist might make would be to believe that all individuals should reach consensus within their own reference group, community, clan, or tribe before intervention occurs
In crisis intervention, not all cases where all the parties involved reach a consensus. Crisis intervention should be done as soon as the crisis has been identified. Assuming that all individuals would reach a consensus is not ethical. This is because reaching a consensus is difficult in some cases, and the crisis might explode. Intervention measures should be taken before the crisis erupts. Crisis intervention is significant, even when the parties reach a consensus later. Crisis intervention is a precautionary measure that is taken in any circumstances. People from different communities, groups, tribes and other references have different perspectives. Therefore, reaching a consensus in a situation where a crisis is experienced is a challenge that is experienced (Kanel, 2012).
A focused multicultural view looks at multicultural counseling in relation to “visible and racial ethnic minorities”
According to National Guidance Research Forum (2012), ethnic minorities seek counseling services more than the ethnic majority groups. This indicates the reason why some counselors hypothesize that the problems of the minority affect the majority. The assumption infers the behavior of the majority of a sample of the minority. Multicultural counseling is based on the fact that each person has unique characteristics, and a unique approach should be applied when counseling different people. Therefore, multicultural counseling opposes the aspect of focusing on ethnic minorities. The differences between people from different cultural backgrounds are respected when multicultural counseling is applied. The cultures of all people are accepted, and their perspectives respected (Ponterotto 2010).
A high-context culture ties who one is to the group
A high-context culture consists of people with close ties for a long time. A person is tied to high-context culture because there are many connections to the group. The behavior of a person is shaped by the culture of the group. When people interact closely for a long time, they know how to do things and the mode of thinking. An example of a high-context group is a family. Each member of the family adopts the behavior of the other members of the family (Keogh, 2010). It is hard to change the culture of a person who has experienced a high-context culture.
While the ecology of a culture is important, it appears to play a small role in how a crisis is handled or resolved
Cultural ecology explains how human beings adapt to environments. Cultural ecology explains the culture and biological systems. Therefore, cultural ecology defines the cultural ecosystem that surrounds a person. Even though cultural ecology is applied in crisis intervention, it plays an insignificant role. This is because, during a crisis, people oppose the culture to express their grievances. During a crisis, people stop behaving rationally, and this affects their behavior. The cultural ideologies are disregarded during a crisis because people are confused and unstable. The central aim of crisis intervention is to salvage people, the economy and society from destruction. Therefore, resolving the crisis using the cultural ecology is not appropriate. Cultural ecology can only be applied at the later stages of crisis intervention, but not during the initial stages (Gilliland & James, 2013).
References
Gilliland, B. E., & James, R. K. (2013). Crisis intervention strategies. Belmont, CA : Brooks/Cole, Cengage Learning.
Kanel, K. (2012). A guide to crisis intervention. Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole.
Keogh, J. (2010). Cultural differences: High Context and Low Context.
Miller, G. (2012). Fundamentals of crisis counseling. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
National Guidance Research Forum (2012). Multicultural Counselling. Web.
Ponterotto, J. G. (2010). Handbook of multicultural counseling. Thousand Oaks, Calif: SAGE Publications.