Chapter 2
MULTICULTURAL COMPETENCE, ETHICS,
POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY, AND RESILIENCE
How can this chapter help you and your clients?
Chapter 2, “Multicultural Competence, Ethics, Positive Psychology, and Resilience,”
presents crucial aspects of all interviewing and counseling. A strength-based “can do”
approach enables clients to resolve issues rather than focusing on what they “can’t do.”
CHAPTER GOALS
Effective interviews build on professional ethics, multicultural sensitivity, and a
positive wellness approach. Specifics are stressed that apply to use in the interview.
Awareness, knowledge, skills, and actions developed through the concepts of this
chapter will enable you to:
▲ Examine your identity as a multicultural being, how dimensions of diversity and
privilege may affect the session, and the central importance of multicultural
competence.
▲ Identify multicultural strengths in clients as a path toward wellness and resilience.
▲ Develop an awareness of ethics and the place of social justice in your practice.
▲ Define and apply positive psychology as a basis for fostering and building client
resilience.
▲ Use therapeutic lifestyle changes (TLC) as positive wellness strategies in the session
for physical and mental health.
INTRODUCTION
Three related topics are discussed in this chapter, and each one could take a full class to
discuss. It is important that students have a beginning understanding of how
multicultural/diversity issues supplement ethics and provide a foundation for infusing the
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(TLCs) build on the microtraining tradition found in the positive asset search, but they
stress the importance of strengths and wellness even more.
The MindTap includes student pre- and posttests. Also included there is the Portfolio of
Competencies. This asks students to assess their mastery of the chapter concepts and to
engage in self-reflection on how they plan to implement the ideas of this chapter.
OVERVIEW OF THE CHAPTER AND MINDTAP SUPPORT
MULTICULTURAL COMPETENCE
The importance of developing diversity and multicultural competence is discussed.
Awareness of your clients’ multicultural backgrounds enables you to understand their
uniqueness more fully. We live in a multicultural world where every client you encounter
will be different from the last and different from you in some major way. Without a basic
understanding of and sensitivity to a client’s uniqueness, the interviewer will fail to
establish a relationship and to truly grasp a client’s issues. Just as importantly, the
interviewer could engage unknowingly in oppressive practices. A special statement from
Mark Pope of the Cherokee Nation and past president of the American Counseling
List of MindTap resources available for this section:
2. Interactive Exercise: Assessing Your Multicultural Identity. This will help you assess
your race/cultural identity development. The exercise includes several multicultural
3. Case Study: Minority Experience in Counseling Training.
5. Video Activity: Educating Agents of Change. A Review of the Educational Goals of
the Psychology Department in the Central American University.
RESPECTFUL INTERVIEWING AND COUNSELING
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1. Interactive Exercise: We Are All Multicultural Beings. This exercise will help you
3. Video Activity: Toward Multicultural Competence: A gay client “coming out”
(Segment 1).
5. Group Practice Exercise: Examine the multicultural guidelines and competencies.
ETHICS AND MORALS: PROFESSIONAL AND PERSONAL
Five basic concepts of ethics are presented: confidentiality, competence, informed
consent, power, and social justice, with quotes from the ethical standards of several
fields. The relationship of ethics to multicultural competence is explored within the
framework of the multicultural guidelines and competencies. In addition, the websites are
List of MindTap resources available for this section:
1. Websites: List of websites and links to various codes of ethics.
3. Interactive Exercise: Ethical Self-Assessment. This will provide important personal
background as you read this chapter.
5. Video Activity: Informed Consent.
7. Group Practice Exercise: Develop an Informed Consent Form.
POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY: BUILDING CLIENT RESILIENCE
List of MindTap resources available for this section:
1. Websites: List of websites and links to health and the Wellness Wheel.
3. Interactive Exercise: Your Wellness Plan.
THERAPEUTIC LIFESTYLE CHANGES: SPECIFICS ON WHICH TO BUILD
WELLNESS FOR LIFETIME RESILIENCE
The focus of this section is on the more practical counseling implications of the research-
based Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes. The goal of this model is similar to
Sweeney/Myers wellness model, which can be found in MindTap and also in the
List of MindTap resources available for this section:
1. Group Practice Exercise: Examine the Multicultural Guidelines and Competencies.
DEMONSTRATIONS AND VIDEOS TO SUPPLEMENT ESSENTIALS OF
INTENTIONAL INTERVIEWING, Third Edition
Demonstrations, films, and videos, available at www.emicrotraining.com or
http://ctiv.alexanderstreet.com, that we use for this session include:
various multicultural counseling issues. Each one is challenging and brings out
extensive student discussion.
• Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay, & Transgendered Counseling by Stuart Chen-Hayes and
Lynn Banez. This contains the full video of the Lynn Banez CD-ROM vignette on
“coming out.”
CLASS PROCEDURES
This will vary according to your class needs. If your students have had extensive work in
ethics and multicultural competence, then your focus for this class likely will be on
wellness issues. If the students have gone through a developmental course (with a
wellness focus), then the other two concepts can be given more stress. The following is
what we do when we want to cover all three ideas.
1. Lecture/discussion of ethical issues. While we could lecture on these issues and use
the associated PowerPoints to help focus discussion, our preference here is to ask
students to name the five key ethical issues stressed in the book—competence,
2. Additional ethical issues. It is also important to stress that the five key issues are only
a beginning introduction to ethical issues. We like to remind students that they should
3. Informed consent form. We review our form with the students and ask them to use it
4. Viewing of multicultural video. We like to show our new interview with Allen and
client or the full version of the Thomas Parham Afrocentric demonstration. It
5. Defining multiculturalism. The Mark Pope statement is particularly valuable. Its open
discussion of issues will likely prompt some lively discussion. The idea that we are
6. Discussion of the Guidelines for Multicultural Proficiency. These guidelines have
been approved unanimously by the American Psychological Association Council and
7. Privilege. As you can see, there is a lot that can be done with this chapter, and
covering every issue will be a challenge. We have presented more here than usually
can be done in a three-hour class. If you have three one-hour sessions, it should be
possible, however. We introduce the idea of privilege and ask students to consider
8. Wellness mini-lecture. It is time for a short lecture on the major concepts of positive
psychology and wellness. We include a definition of positive psychology and how it
9. Experiential practice with wellness. We divide into groups of three and have students
review three or four of the TLCs or conduct a wellness assessment on one or two
aspects of the Sweeney/Myers wellness model. We suggest that the student to serve
GROUP PRACTICE EXERCISES
Again, it will be difficult to complete all of the following in one class session. But here
are three practice exercises that we have used over time.
1. Examine your multicultural background. Students meet together in groups of three
2. Develop an informed consent form. Ask the students to review the sample informed
3. Practice wellness interview. In groups of three, students engage in a wellness
assessment. Conclude this practice with discussion of a plan for the future. The third
person will be an observer and provide comments and give feedback on the process.
