Why is multicultural counselling important in Malaysia?

Why is multicultural counselling important in Malaysia? This question becomes my research background.

1. MC is important in Malaysia because the socio-political context of Malaysia is unique yet complex. This can influence and pose challenges to the profession itself.

2. The Malaysian counselling profession has failed to seriously consider diversity. This is because there are ethnic disparities among the providers and the recipients of counselling in the Malaysian context. Yet, Malaysian counsellors have an ethical-legal responsibility to ensure that their practices are multiculturally competent when working with diverse clients from different cultural backgrounds. To date, there has been no clearly identified set of standards for judging the quality of multicultural competence formulated for use in Malaysia yet.

3. In addition, previous literature have shown that addressing diversity in counselling practice with clients from diverse backgrounds can enhance the process and outcome of counselling in multicultural contexts. However, there is a lack of empirical studies exploring multicultural counselling in specific cultural contexts such as Malaysia.

In view of the above factors, my phD project aims to advance research in the area of multicultural counselling in Malaysia so that it can contribute towards improving the current practices to become more multiculturally competent! Don't you want to work effectively and ethically with diverse clients regardless of their cultural background? Do you want to be multiculturally competent counsellors?