Military Cultural Competency in Counselor Education and Supervision
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My motivation to move forward with this study is founded on prior research that illuminates the type of engagement between military veterans seeking mental health services within community settings and non-military mental health practitioners. Despite mental health counselors’ skills to connect with their clients, veterans lack confidence in these practitioners’ capacities to understand them from a cultural perspective and are either not engaging in or quickly disengaging from the treatment process.
This problem has negatively affected veterans because they are inclined to drop out of treatment and therefore not address their mental health issues professionally. Not addressing mental health concerns professionally can exacerbate the veteran’s mental health condition and potentially lead to negative coping skills that can further jeopardize the Veterans overall health, relationships, and career. The military, with its highly prescribed cultural identity, may be a model culture for developing a military cultural competency curriculum within an institution of higher education. Therefore, there is an urgent need for counselor education and supervision programs to equip counselors with the skills to work more effectively with and to advocate for improved mental health services for the military population
