Addressing the Complexities of Culture and Gender in Counseling

The purpose of this article is to describe a model for organizing and systematically considering 9 complex and overlapping cultural influences that counselors need to be addressing in their work: Age and generational influences, Disability, Religion, Ethnicity, Social status, Sexual orientation, Indigenous heritage, National origin, and Gender (which together form the slightly misspelled acronym ADRESSING). The ADRESSING model is particularly useful in helping counselors and educators to (a) examine their own biases and areas of inexperience regarding minority cultures and (b) consider the salience of multiple cultural influences and identities with their clients.