Rehab 206: Psychological and Social Aspects of Disability Presentation Written and Edited by Michele E.

Salas

What is Multiculturalism?
y The word culture can be interpreted broadly, and can be associated

with a racial or ethnic group as well as will gender, religion, economic status nationality, physical capacity or disability, and affectional or sexual orientation. y Multiculturalism is a generic term that indicates any relationship between and within two or more diverse groups. y The multicultural perspective in human-service education takes into consideration the specific values, beliefs, and actions conditioned by a client s ethnicity, gender, religion, socioeconomic status, political views, sexual orientation, geographic region and historical experience with the dominant culture. y Multiculturalism provides a conceptual framework that recognizes the complex diversity of a pluralistic society, while at the same time suggesting bridges of shared concern that bind culturally different individuals to one another.
Issues and Ethics in the Helping Profession by Gerald Corey, Marianne Schneider Corey and Patrick Callanan

Disability as a Culture: The Independent Living Movement

Social Movements as the Beginning y Civil Rights: Awareness of rights y Consumerism: Distrust of seller or service provider y Self-Help: variety of self help interest group which are intended to exercise control over their own lives and services y Demedicalization/Self Care: The assumption that individuals can and should take greater responsibility for their own health and medical care. Concerned with that too many social problems and life conditions are being unnecessarily medicalized.
Independent Living: From Social Movement to Analytic Paradigm by Gerben DeJong

Disability as a Difference: A Feminist Perspective

y In her book The Rejected Body she defines disability as a form of difference, recognizing that both stigma and being the Other are aspects of the social oppression of people with disabilities. y Difference is a more general concept than Otherness or stigmatization y Wendell additionally argues that it is important not to assume that people with disabilities identify with all others who have disabilities or share a single perspective on disability (or anything else), or that having a disability is the most important aspect of a person s identity of social position
The Rejected Body by Susan Wendell

Symbolic Meaning of Illness and Disabilities- The Other

y When we make people Other, we group them

together as the objects of our experience instead of regarding them as subjects of experience with whom we might identify, and we see them primarily as symbolic of something else- usually, but not always, something we reject and fear and project onto them. To the non-disabled, people with disabilities and people with dangerous or incurable illnesses symbolize, among other things, imperfection, failure to control the body, and everyone s vulnerability to weakness, pain, and death. Susan Wendall
The Rejected Body by Susan Wendall

Flight From the Rejected Body: Disciplines of Normality

y .. the body is idealized and objectified to a high

degree; these cultural practices foster demands to control our bodies and to attempt to perfect them, which in turn create rejection, shame, and fear in relation to both failures to control the body and deviations from body ideals. Susan Wendell

The Rejected Body by Susan Wendell

Susan Wendell on The Social Construct of Disability

y There is a distinction between the biological reality of a disability and the social construction of a disability that cannot be made sharply, because the biological and the social are interactive in creating disability. y They are interactive not only in that complex interactions of social factors and our bodies affect health and functioning, but also in that social arrangements can make a biological condition more or less relevant to almost any situation. y Wendall calls the interaction of the biological and the social to create (or prevent) disability the social construction of disability.
The Rejected Body by Susan Wendell

Models of Disability: Chapter 2

Intervention Strategies guided by these models: y Biomedical Model: The model with standardized objective diagnoses and relieves society of any responsibility for PWDs y Environmental Model: Prejudice and discrimination are not an inherent aspect of a disability. The environment both social and physical can cause, define, or exaggerate disability y Functional Model: Theorizes that the functions of the individual influence the definition of disability. y Sociopolitical Model: Is also referred to as the Minority Group Model or the Independent Living Model.* This model includes prejudice and discrimination as causal factors of disability and advocates for civil rights rather than charity or pity.
Disability, Society, and The Individual by Julie Smart

Multiculturalism as Psychosocial Inclusion for PWDs: Facts on PWDs as a Minority

y In 1999, the National Center for the Dissemination of

Disability Research indicated that ethnic minority persons have both higher rates of work disability and higher rates of severe disability y Demographic projections have indicated that the size of the ethnic minority population is increasingly rapid

Correlates of Multicultrual Counseling Competencies of Vocational Rehabilitation Counselors (Bellini, 2002)

The Current Context of Multiculturalism in the VR System (The Absence of)

y Advocates of the multicultural perspective maintain

that traditional counseling approaches and techniques have generally been ineffective when used with racial and ethnic minority individuals and that graduate training programs in counseling do not provide adequate training in multicultural issues to ensure that counselors have sufficient multicultural awareness, knowledge, and skills to provide effective services to these individuals.

Correlates of Multicultural Counseling Competencies of Vocational Rehabilitation Counselors (Bellini, 2002)

Multiculturalism Competence: Professional Training

First Developed by Derald Wing Sue and collegues in 1982 helped focused attention on multiculturalism y Domain 1: Counselor Awareness of Own Cultural Values and Bias y Domain 2: Counselor Awareness of Client s Worldview y Domain 3: Culturally appropriate Intervention Strategies
Strategies and Techniques for Counselor Training Based on the Multicultural Counseling Competencies by Patricia Arredondo and G. Miguel Arciniega

Domain 1: Counselor Awareness of Own Cultural Values and Bias

A. With respect to attitudes and beliefs, culturally competent counselors: 1. Believe that cultural self-awareness and sensitivity is essential. 2. Are aware of how their own cultural background and experiences have influenced attitudes, values, and biases about psychological processes. 3. Are able to recognize limits of their multicultural competencies and expertise B. With respect to knowledge, culturally competent counselors: 1. Have specific knowledge about their own racial and cultural heritage and how it personally and professionally affects their definition of normality/abnormality and the process of counseling. 2. Possess knowledge and understanding about how oppression, racism, discriminations affect them personally and in their work. 3. Posses knowledge about their social impact on others. C. With respect to skills culturally competent counselors: 1. Seek out educational, consultative, and training experiences to improve their understanding and effectiveness in working with culturally different populations. 2. Constantly seeking to understand themselves as racial and cultural being and are actively seeking a nonracist identity.
By Derald Wing Sue and Patricia Arredondo

Domain 2: Counselor Awareness of Client s Worldview

A. With respect to attitudes and beliefs, culturally competent counselors: 1. Are aware of their negative and positive emotional reactions towards other racial and ethnic groups that may prove detrimental to the counseling relationship. They are willing to contrast their values with those of their culturally different clients in a non-judgmental fashion. B. With respect to knowledge, culturally competent counselors: 1. Posses knowledge about the particular client group with whom they are working. 2. Understand how race, culture and ethnicity may affect personality formation, and vocational choices. 3. Understand about sociopolitical influences that impinge on the lives of racial and ethnic minorities. C. With respect to skills, culturally competent counselors: 1. Familiarize themselves with relevant research regarding mental health that affect various ethnic and racial groups. 2. Become actively involved with minority individual outside the counseling setting so that their perspective of minorities is more than an academic or helping exercise.

By Derald Wing Sue and Patricia Arredondo

Domain 3: Culturally appropriate Intervention Strategies

A. With respect to attitudes and beliefs, culturally competent counselors: 1. Respect clients religious and spiritual beliefs and values, including attributions and taboos. 2. Value bilingualism and do not view another language as an impediment to counseling. B. With respect to knowledge, culturally competent counselors 1. Are aware of institutional barriers that prevent minorities from using mental health services. 2. Have knowledge of the potential bias in assessment instruments and interprets findings in a way that recognizes the cultural and linguistic characteristics of clients. 3. Have knowledge of family structures, hierarchies, values, and beliefs from various cultural perspectives. C. With respect to skills, culturally competent counselors 1. They are not tied to only one method or approach to helping but recognize that helping styles and approaches may be culture bound. 2. Take responsibility for interacting in the language requested by client and, if not feasible, makes appropriate referrals. 3. Have training and expertise in the use of traditional assessment and testing instruments.
By Derald Wing Sue and Patricia Arredondo

Incorporation: Benefits of Multiculturalism

y Taking small steps toward creating all-inclusive multiculturalism has the potential to enable substantial positive, organization-wide change, particularly through the development of feeling of inclusion and high-quality relationship across difference. y In an all-inclusive, multicultural environment, organizations and clients can create workplaces in which they feel safe to innovate, knowing that their unique experience and contributions are valued. y Such relationships create a host of positive outcomes for individuals, organizations, and even the communities in which they are embedded.
Unlocking the Benefits of Diversity by Stevens, Plaut, and Sanchez-Burks

Scenerio: Application to the Psychosocial Adaptation Process

Positive y Antecedent: Counselor Culturally Competent y Process: Participating Consumer y Outcome: Successful Case Closures Negative y Antecedent: Counselor Limitation to Multiculturalism y Process: Isolated Consumer y Outcome: Unsuccessful Case Closures