Mental Health Counselor Qualities for a Diverse Clientele: Linking Empathy, Universal-Diverse Orientation, and Emotional Intelligence

Abstract

We examined how culturally relevant variables, including universal-diverse orientation (UDO), an attitude characterized by awareness and acceptance of similarities and differences between self and others, and emotional intelligence, the ability to accurately monitor emotions, might be related to empathy.Two-hundred-and-eleven counseling graduate students completed measures of these variables, as well as a demographic sheet. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that UDO and emotional intelligence, along with gender, significantly explained variance in empathy. Implications for effective mental health counseling across diverse settings are discussed.