The talking cure—building the core skills and the confidence of counsellors and psychotherapists to work effectively with multilingual patients through training and supervision

Abstract

Background Increasing numbers of multilingual people seek counselling and psychotherapy in a system that is rooted in a monolingual ideology. Despite these numbers, there is very little training for therapists and counsellors equipping them to treat multilingual patients. This is strange given that therapeutic treatment is known as the “talking cure.” Research with therapists and counsellors about their beliefs and behaviour with multilingual patients revealed that therapists were anxious about their ability to work with multilingual patients. Mothertongue multiethnic counselling service, a small NGO based in the UK, developed and delivered training for counsellors and therapists and culturally and linguistically sensitive supervision groups for counsellors and therapists working in their local NHS Improving Access to Psychological Therapies Service. They also developed and delivered a module on culturally and linguistically sensitive supervision for IAPT supervision courses. Aim An evaluation of these initiatives was conducted, to explore whether they would improve therapists’ core skills in working with multilingual clients. Method A combination of questionnaires, which employed Likert scales and Open Boxes, and face‐to face interviews were conducted with trainees and supervisees who had participated in these training and supervision initiatives. Results After the training and supervision, the confidence and multilingual awareness of counsellors and therapists improved, with an average score of improvement of 4 points on a 10‐point scale. All seven of the interviewed counsellors and therapists said they felt more able to use multilingualism as a therapeutic asset in the treatment of trauma and other presenting issues. Conclusions and implications This type of training and supervision has the potential to change counsellors’ and therapists’ thinking and behaviour, enhance their core skills and impact directly on mental health practice and the reduction in health inequalities. As a result of these sessions over the past decade, and the evidence from the evaluations, linguistically and culturally sensitive supervision is now being embedded into the structures of one local NHS service.

English or Arabic in Healthcare Education: Perspectives of Healthcare Alumni, Students, and Instructors

“…While examining the influence of the language of instruction in medical education is important, most of the language studies in the field have focused on the communication between the doctors and patients in the workplace environment. [4][5][6] The language of instruction in healthcare education has drawn the attention of only a few researchers around the globe and scholars have examined it in terms of graduate medical doctors in the United States and the United Kingdom 7 conducted a study on the use of English in the medical profession in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia and they encouraged the collaboration between applied linguists and medical professionals to support the needs of international medical students who speak English as a foreign language.…”

Language Choice in Psychotherapy of Multilingual Clients

“…To the best of our knowledge, even if there is a focus on language in psychotherapy research, accounts predominantly examine the role of the client's multilingualism, but rarely the therapist's multilingualism, which may shape encounters with Language and Psychoanalysis, 2021, 10 (2), 1-22. http://dx.doi.org/10.7565/landp.v10i2.5542 5 multilingual/multicultural clients. Research has shown that awareness about multilingualism is crucial for therapists working with clients from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds (Bager-Charleson et al, 2017;Costa & Dewaele, 2019). The current qualitative study adds to this avenue of research by focusing on how multilingual and multicultural therapists in the Netherlands use their languages.…”

Negotiating the language(s) for psychotherapy talk: A mixed methods study from the perspective of multilingual clients

“…Many clients positioned the therapist as the gate‐keeper of linguistic practices, a finding which reinforces the need to train mental health practitioners to feel confident to offer a therapeutic space where multiple languages are welcome, where the exploration of clients’ linguistic histories is valued and where a multilingual therapeutic frame (Costa, 2020) is applied. Client feedback confirms that ‘talking about the talking’ (Costa & Dewaele, 2019) is productive and merits to be developed as a core skill for therapists.…”