Multicultural counseling research in Malaysia

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My personal background and professional experiences have fostered my awareness of a need for a multicultural focus in counseling. As a person, I am a female of mixed-ethnic (Malay-Indian) Muslim origin. I have been in contact with various ethnic groups and people of diverse age, gender, religion, socioeconomic status, education, nationality, and other cultural diversity factors during my upbringing, growing up and schooling years. As a professional, I am a product of a Western-based professional education and training programs in Australia (BSc (Hons) in Psychology) and Malaysia (Master of Counseling, which program bears a striking resemblance to the counselor education programs in the USA). During my experiences as a practising counselor and counselor educator over the last 19 years, I have been confronted with many cultural issues and questions when trying to reflect on the meaning of my personal and professional experience working with Malaysian clients. This raises some issues of the adequacy and relevance of my previous Western-based education and training, the level of multicultural competency of my current practice, and the degree of cultural modification needed in my counseling approach to localise and provide effective and ethical services to diverse Malaysian clients. I shared my reflections on these experiences with local Malaysian counselors and some publications resulting from this contributed to the development of this research.

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