Journal Assignment: Multicultural Awareness

Journal Assignment: Multicultural Awareness

Jean Piaget and Erik Erikson are two prominent psychologists in the field of human growth and development. Erikson’s Stages of Psychosocial Development and Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development provide a background for understanding the developmental context of clients. Life-span development theory states that individuals continue to develop from infancy to late adulthood. Therefore, it is important to recognize that each client is in a particular stage of development. For example, if you are working with a 9-year-old client and an 80-year-old client, their current stages of emotional, physical, social, spiritual, and cognitive development would be vastly different. This understanding of the developmental context of your clients is foundational for client conceptualization and choosing appropriate intervention methods.

A client’s cultural background is also critically important. Where your client was born and raised, the cultural beliefs and religious convictions of the client’s family, and the different cultures and beliefs of the communities where the client lived is also fundamental to understanding your client and determining appropriate intervention methods.

While you must be aware of your client’s developmental and socio-cultural context, it is just as important to be aware of your own, with its biases and beliefs, so that your client conceptualization is not influenced by a lack of self-awareness. Participating in self-assessment can help counselors gain an understanding of who they are, what they believe, and how to separate personal biases from the counseling process.

For this Journal Assignment, you will assess your multicultural awareness and cultural competence, and consider the importance of multicultural awareness and cultural competence to the practice of clinical mental health counseling.