Community Counseling

This course will be an examination of the theory and processes of counseling persons in mental health, school, and marriage and family contexts from the perspectives of clients from diverse cultural backgrounds by counselors of equally diverse cultural backgrounds. The focus of the course will be on the impact of the counselor’s prejudices, biases, values, ethics, and social/cultural expectations on the counselor from a culturally diverse background. The client must be seen as part of an integrated system of mutually reciprocal components (family, environment, school, social structure, friends, culture, etc.). The counseling context will be viewed from a holistic, integrative perspective rather than an individual perspective.