COUC 504 Week 8 Group DB Forum 5 Example

Group Discussion Board Forum 5: Thread and Replies

COUC 504 Multicultural Counseling, Group Discussion Board Forum 5 (thread and two replies)

Thread by [Student Name]

The prompt, the writer's background and the classmates' posts are composites standing in for the course's own forum; the competencies, studies, Scripture and textbook are real and described from their published sources; the requirements follow Liberty's public course guide for COUC 504.

Thread

As a youth minister training to be a counselor, I have felt a tension all term. My faith is the reason I want to counsel, yet this course has repeatedly shown me how easily a counselor's worldview can crowd out a client's. This week's readings helped me see religion and spirituality not as my private business or as a topic to avoid, but as a cultural dimension that every client carries, including those who have no faith at all.

Hays and Erford (2018) place religious and spiritual identity alongside race, ethnicity and other cultural variables, and McGoldrick et al. (2005) show how deeply religion is woven into family patterns in many ethnic groups. The Association for Spiritual, Ethical and Religious Values in Counseling gives that insight a structure. Cashwell and Watts (2010) present the ASERVIC competencies developed in 2009, organized around culture and worldview, counselor self-awareness, human and spiritual development, communication, assessment, and diagnosis and treatment. They ask counselors to understand their own beliefs, to respond to clients' spiritual expressions with acceptance and to set goals consistent with the client's beliefs.

Research supports taking clients' faith seriously. Captari et al. (2018) analyzed 97 outcome studies with 7,181 participants and found that psychotherapy adapted to clients' religious and spiritual beliefs produced greater improvement in psychological and spiritual functioning than no treatment or secular comparison therapies. In the most rigorous additive designs, adapted therapy matched standard therapy for reducing distress while producing greater spiritual well-being.

The evidence supports integration when the client wants it, which means the client's request, not the counselor's conviction, opens the door. In practice, I would ask every client in intake whether faith or spirituality matters to them, explain that we can include it or leave it aside, and document their choice. If a client's beliefs differ from mine, my task is to understand how those beliefs help or burden them, and to seek supervision rather than steer the conversation toward my own convictions.

Before Paul addressed the council in Athens, he had walked its streets and looked closely at the objects of its worship (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Acts 17:22-23). That order, understanding first and speaking second, fits counseling well.

Classmates: how would you respond to a client whose beliefs about a moral issue directly conflict with yours?

Reply to Jordan

Jordan, you wrote that you are not religious and worry you will be unprepared when a client wants to talk about faith, since you have never studied it. Your concern is shared across the helping professions. Vieten et al. (2013) noted that most people consider religion and spirituality important, that clients often prefer to have them addressed and yet that these topics are seldom discussed or included in assessment and treatment planning, partly because most therapists receive little training. In response, they proposed a set of basic spiritual and religious competencies for psychologists, built from a literature review, a focus group of scholars and clinicians and an online survey of experts.

The competencies emphasize attitudes and knowledge any clinician can develop, such as respecting diverse spiritual views, understanding that religion can be either a resource or a source of struggle, and knowing how to inquire about spiritual background. None of them require personal faith. In fact, your outsider position may help you avoid assuming you already know what a client's beliefs mean. One step might be asking clients to teach you what their faith means to them, much as we did in our immersion projects. Would you feel comfortable asking a client to explain a belief you do not share?

Reply to Hannah

Hannah, you said you hope to pray with clients because prayer has been powerful in your own recovery from depression. I understand that hope, and I think the research supports a careful version of it. Captari et al. (2018) found that therapies adapted to clients' religious and spiritual beliefs improved outcomes, but those studies concerned clients who sought or accepted that adaptation. The finding is about matching treatment to the client's values, not the counselor's, and it says little about clients who would find prayer in session uncomfortable.

That is where the ethics come in. The ASERVIC competencies described by Cashwell and Watts (2010) ask counselors to use spiritual and religious practices only when they fit the client's goals and beliefs, and the profession's ethics code warns against imposing a counselor's own values. So prayer in session would need to follow the client's request or clear agreement, after informed consent, with the freedom to decline and no hint that declining would disappoint you. I would also suggest discussing it with a supervisor before the first time. Your own experience could make you more sensitive to clients who want prayer, as long as it does not lead you to assume that every Christian client does. How would you raise the option without making it feel expected?

References

Captari, L. E., Hook, J. N., Hoyt, W., Davis, D. E., McElroy-Heltzel, S. E., & Worthington, E. L., Jr. (2018). Integrating clients' religion and spirituality within psychotherapy: A comprehensive meta-analysis. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 74(11), 1938-1951. https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.22681

Cashwell, C. S., & Watts, R. E. (2010). The new ASERVIC competencies for addressing spiritual and religious issues in counseling. Counseling and Values, 55(1), 2-5. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2161-007X.2010.tb00018.x

English Standard Version Bible. (2016). Crossway. (Original work published 2001)

Hays, D. G., & Erford, B. T. (2018). Developing multicultural counseling competence: A systems approach (3rd ed.). Pearson.

McGoldrick, M., Giordano, J., & Garcia-Preto, N. (Eds.). (2005). Ethnicity and family therapy (3rd ed.). Guilford Press.

Vieten, C., Scammell, S., Pilato, R., Ammondson, I., Pargament, K. I., & Lukoff, D. (2013). Spiritual and religious competencies for psychologists. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 5(3), 129-144. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0032699