The importance of cultural competence counselling, addressing the unique needs and experiences of individuals from diverse cultural backgrounds
Cultural competence is essential when working with diverse populations, especially in a country like India that represents unity in diversity. It involves awareness of one’s own cultural background, worldview, beliefs, and attitudes, as well as knowledge and respect for other cultures. Cultural beliefs are first learned at home, which often serves as a comfort zone, but mental health professionals must move beyond this to understand clients from different cultural contexts. In social work and psychology, cultural competence helps professionals understand clients’ values, beliefs, and explanations of health and illness, including culturally rooted beliefs such as supernatural or magical causes of mental illness that exist due to lack of awareness. Core therapeutic principles such as unconditional positive regard, empathy, non-judgmental attitude, active listening, and appropriate eye contact are crucial to building trust and sustaining the therapeutic process.
Mental health professionals encounter culturally diverse individuals not only in hospitals but also in schools and community settings, where students and clients differ in intelligence, family background, culture, and socioeconomic status. Developing cultural competence enables counselors and psychologists to work effectively with people across differences of caste, religion, gender, age, income, education, and gender identity. It helps clients feel respected, heard, and supported, thereby strengthening rapport and improving engagement in therapy. At the same time, professionals must reflect on how their own cultural beliefs may influence their perceptions and interactions with clients whose belief systems differ from theirs. Acceptance of cultural diversity is therefore a prerequisite for ethical and effective practice in mental health care.
Cultural competence also plays a significant role in reducing stigma, disparities, and inequalities in healthcare access and outcomes. In India, stigma and lack of awareness often prevent individuals from seeking mental health support due to fear of social isolation. Research has shown that culturally competent healthcare improves patient satisfaction, engagement in treatment, recovery, and overall health outcomes, while reducing readmission rates and mortality. Culturally relevant interventions have proven effective in areas such as diabetes management, sexually transmitted diseases, substance use, and cancer screening, especially through approaches like bilingual community health workers. Although cultural competence has gained priority in Western countries, it remains underdeveloped in the Indian context, highlighting the urgent need to integrate culturally sensitive practices into India’s healthcare and mental health systems.
Indian studies have proved that people who belong to ethnic, racial and cultural minorities often have less access to healthcare and have poorer health outcomes when compared to the majority population. The same has been observed during COVID pandemic as well. Also disparities have been noted in patients with advanced disease and suffering from pain, with minority patients having less access to or making less use bof palliative care. In the United States, a range of solutions has been proposed to address the issue of inequality in access to healthcare, with cultural competence figuring prominently among them. Also, there is evidence that not only in India but also in United States there are health care disparities massively for African or Black Americans as they are less likely to receive adequate health care services than natives of America or white Americans to treat diabetes, neurological problems though these are few examples.
In the United States Similar disparities can be found in all areas of healthcare and among different minorities, such as Hispanics. In 2015, African-Americans had a life expectancy of 75.5 years, while the life expectancy for White persons was 78.9 though Health disparities have been observed in all areas of health even oral health as well. Therefore it is important to be culturally competent as psychotherapy or psychological counseling should be personal and confidential where clients should not have to face any problems to speak frankly without any hesitation so that they feel they are important for the therapist which can lead the procedure to be effective. Also cultural competence may give clients the comfort to share more with mental health professionals. It is basic right of people irrespective of their caste creed religion and educational level to receive help to treat mental illness.
