Cultural humility, counseling alliance, and counseling outcome among LGBTQ+ clients

Abstract

Literature suggests LGBTQ+ cultural competencies and cultural humility as critical components to providing counseling services to LGBTQ+ clients. Previous research has shown that cultural humility leads to better counseling outcomes through the counseling alliance in sexual minority clients. This study investigated the relationships among cultural humility, counseling alliance, and counseling outcome among 584 LGBTQ+ counseling clients (38.5% were non-cisgender). The results revealed that all three constructs were positively related to one another. Counseling alliance mediated the relationship between cultural humility and counseling outcome. The overall mediation model indicated that cultural humility had direct and indirect effects accounting for 58% of the variance in counseling outcome when controlling for gender, sexual orientation, and level of education. The findings underscore the importance of cultivating cultural humility among counselors working with LGBTQ+ clients to improve counseling alliance and counseling outcomes.