A White Counselor in a Multicultural World: Understanding the Need for a Spiritual, Multicultural Counseling Course

Multicultural counseling must be seen a significant factor in today’s multicultural world as therapists provide therapeutic services offered to clients, especially clients who have immigrated from one country to another within the past 50 years. Multicultural counseling refers to the preparation and practices that help White counselors learn to integrate multicultural and culture-specific awareness, knowledge, and skills into counseling interactions into their practice with multicultural clients. White counselors who work with multicultural clients have the choice to either remain handmaidens of the status quo or transmitters of society’s values or become agents of change. Additionally, it has been demonstrated that White counselors who have participated in a multicultural training program have greater therapeutic skill to offer their multicultural clients. Furthermore, when multicultural counseling is incorporated in a spiritually-enriched therapeutic relationship, White counselors are able to relate more effectively with their multicultural clients. A spiritually-enriched therapeutic relationship offers counselors the opportunity to work with their multicultural clients and incorporate the vital aspect of spirituality, because it is universal to human existence. Therefore, through the use of spirituality in multicultural counseling, White counselors must have the desire to understand their multicultural clients’ worldview, which incorporates the view these clients have of their spirituality. Counselors must understand the importance of developing a curiosity to understand how spirituality influences the lives of their multicultural clients and use this new awareness to help facilitate healing and wholeness for their clients.

Job Burnout Among Public Rehabilitation Counselors

Job burnout among public rehabilitation counselors was explored using the Maslach Burnout Inventory-Human Services Survey (MBI-HSS), which measures three components of burnout: (a) emotional exhaustion, (b) depersonalization, and (c) personal accomplishment. Using multiple regression analyses, perceived administrative support was predictive (p < .001) of both emotional exhaustion and depersonalization. Having clearly defined work procedures was predictive (p < .05) of personal accomplishment. Using a 2 (gender) X 2 (race) X 2 (certification status) X 2 (agency location) X 2 (work setting) X 3 (type of degree) X 2 (partnered status) MANOVA. White counselors were found to have higher levels (p < .05) of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization than African American counselors.

Influence of racial identity and information processing strategies on client conceptualization

Several models exist that explain how counselors can more effectively work with racial/ethnic minority populations and how counselor characteristics (like racial identity) can impact the way counselors practice. Helms (1985) hypothesized that individuals operating in different statuses of racial identity will process racial information in ways characteristic of that status. Gushue and Carter (2000) found that the racial identity status of White participants was related to how they remembered stereotypical information about a hypothetical person. This study is an extension of Gushue and Carter's study with a sample of White counselors-in-training that investigated the relationship between participants' racial identity, their memory for racial stereotypes and their conceptualization of this client's presenting problems. Participants read a vignette about a Black hypothetical client and rated their conceptualization of his concerns. A week later, they completed a recognition task and racial identity attitude measures. Correlations indicated no relationship between racial identity attitudes scales and recognition of previously read stereotypical information, but did indicate that some racial identity attitudes were related to how the client was conceptualized. This finding reinforces the importance of multicultural counselor training. It is of great importance that counselors-in-training have opportunities to grow into the advanced stages of racial identity.