Introduction: Counselling Immigrants
Does society really determine who we are? Migrating to a new country and experiencing such a cultural change made me question what lies ahead in my future, but it wasn't my demise. I became an observer as I observed and compare the practices in Nigeria to the practices in Canada, which made me think about several ethical issues with mental health and factors that contributes to it. Subsequently, before coming to Canada, I was a teacher and loved my job, however, after the relocation to Canada, I tried going back to the teaching field, but it wasn’t like I thought because I had to upgrade. While thinking about the upgrade and how many years I would have to spend, I got a job in the healthcare sector, and …show more content…
However, as an immigrant I have seen the struggles, barriers, and the challenges that other immigrants go through as a result of the cultural changes, adapting to life in a new environment with different values, norms, beliefs, and as well as adjusting their career goals to suit that environment or country. As a result, counsellors working to support immigrant clients may have some difficulties if do not understand the client’s values and beliefs. More so, it is essential for counsellors to become familiar with a clients’ ethnic and cultural background in order to understand those values or characteristics that cannot be attributed to personality traits (Caverley, 2013). Likewise, as counsellors one imperative in culturally sensitive assessment is to gain as much background information from the client as possible in order to provide a personalized interpretation of results (Klotz & Canter, 2006). The purpose of this paper is to investigate into the various ways of counselling immigrants and the implications for counsellors in becoming cultural
Does society really determine who we are? Migrating to a new country and experiencing such a cultural change made me question what lies ahead in my future, but it wasn't my demise. I became an observer as I observed and compare the practices in Nigeria to the practices in Canada, which made me think about several ethical issues with mental health and factors that contributes to it. Subsequently, before coming to Canada, I was a teacher and loved my job, however, after the relocation to Canada, I tried going back to the teaching field, but it wasn’t like I thought because I had to upgrade. While thinking about the upgrade and how many years I would have to spend, I got a job in the healthcare sector, and …show more content…
However, as an immigrant I have seen the struggles, barriers, and the challenges that other immigrants go through as a result of the cultural changes, adapting to life in a new environment with different values, norms, beliefs, and as well as adjusting their career goals to suit that environment or country. As a result, counsellors working to support immigrant clients may have some difficulties if do not understand the client’s values and beliefs. More so, it is essential for counsellors to become familiar with a clients’ ethnic and cultural background in order to understand those values or characteristics that cannot be attributed to personality traits (Caverley, 2013). Likewise, as counsellors one imperative in culturally sensitive assessment is to gain as much background information from the client as possible in order to provide a personalized interpretation of results (Klotz & Canter, 2006). The purpose of this paper is to investigate into the various ways of counselling immigrants and the implications for counsellors in becoming cultural