Ethics, Competence, and Professional Issues in Cross-Cultural Counseling

CULTURE CONTROLS OUR LIVES AND DEFINES REALITY FOR EACH OF US, WITH OR WITHOUT OUR permission and/or intentional awareness.A “culture-centered”approach to counseling recognizes culture as central and not marginal, fundamental and not exotic, for all appropriate counseling interventions.While mental health problems are similar across cultures, the complex classification of the appropriate helping responses across cultures has given rise to a global variety of counseling styles that are complex and ever changing.The increase of urbanized, modernized, and industrialized societies and the corresponding breakdown of family and village support systems have heightened the need for a global variety of counseling styles in the search for solutions to global social problems. This chapter examines the ethical and professional foundations for culture-centered counseling.