Cultural competency

Cultural competency

Cultural competency refers to a person’s ability to understand, respect, and to be open to different cultures. Cultural competence comprises of three main components. The components are awareness, attitude, and knowledge. These components help people to understand more about culture minimizing cultural conflicts.

The attitude in cultural competency refers to the ability to evaluate your inner beliefs pertaining to particular culture. As people interact with different cultures, they find some cultural practices which may be hostile. However, this does not mean that a person should dislike the culture but rather creating awareness about the culture and understanding that cultures are different. People should develop positive attitudes towards different cultural practices.

Knowledge refers to the level in which a person understands the cultures of different people in the world. Knowledge is very crucial when it comes to interacting with people with diverse cultures. Some of the practices that are acceptable in our culture may be unacceptable in other cultures. As a result, people must conduct researches about the cultural practices of the people they interact with.

Skills refer to the abilities of people to interact with people from diverse cultures. Communication is an essential skill that is used by people for expression. Either formal or informal discussion, people should have skills that enable them to relate to each other well. People need to choose their tones, words when dealing with different cultures. These components are dependent on each other for practical, cultural competency skills.

The adolescent stage is the stage in which youths first engage in drug and substance abuse. Adolescents, children, and young adults are categorized in the youth culture. Youth culture refers to the lifestyle of young people. Some different groups or relationships affect a teenager’s ability towards the use of drugs. The first cultural group is friendship. Gang groups are common among teenagers, especially those in high schools. A gang group is a group that is identified by rebellious, antisocial, and illegal activities. Adolescents who join these groups have high chances of engaging in drug and substance use because there are, in most instances, exposed to them. Gangs have a positive attitude towards drug abuse because they believe that it helps them to engage in their activities. They believe the more they engage in drug abuse, the more they gain the courage to participate in illegal activities. For instance, some people cannot commit crimes without the influence of substance use. This explains why there is a high correlation between drug and substance use and crimes among youth in society.

Religious youth groups have a high impact on determining if an adolescent will engage in substance use. Religious youth groups are identified through their engagements in activities involving spiritual beliefs and moral actions. Most religious beliefs have negative attitudes toward substance use. As a result, the faithful youth group members develop negative attitudes towards drug abuse. For instance, Christians believe that the body is the temple of God, and thus they should preserve. This belief enables youths belonging to Christian youth groups not to engage in drug abuse because that is making the body unholy. Research has concluded that religious teenagers have lower chances of participating in substance use even when they are faced with challenges like stress and peer pressure since they treat them as temptations.

Family attitudes towards substance use have a significant impact on adolescents’ engagements on substance use. The youths perceive close family members like parents as their role models, and thus they are likely to engage in activities that the parents participate in. According to research, children of smoker parents are more likely to become smokers at the adolescent stage. On the other hand, children from families who do not engage in substance use have minimal chances of involving in substance use. Even when adolescents engage in substance use, non-substance use families are more likely to take treatment efforts more seriously than parents who engage in substance use.

Cultural differences play an important role in substance use among teenagers in the adolescent stage. Movement from one culture can increase or decrease the probability of using certain drugs. The neighborhood, race, favorite music genre can interfere with a person’s substance useability. In the US, people who live in slums have high chances of engaging in drugs. Even most of the drug businesses are conducted in these slums. Moving to this environment exposes you to high chances of becoming drug users. For instance, El Salvador neighborhoods residents are prone to the substance because substances are available in the slums of the city. There is also the presence of gangs that distribute drugs. The more the substances are available to a person, the more a person will engage in using them.