Bridges or Barriers? A Systematic Literature Review of Multilingualism in Counseling

Abstract Although the majority of the world’s population is multilingual, language issues in counseling remain under researched. To understand multilingualism issues in counseling, we conducted a systematic review of the literature published from 2013 to 2023. We aimed to understand how multiple languages are used during counseling sessions and what benefits or challenges may exist for the clients and counselors. To meet the end, we used the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analysis protocols (PRISMA-P; Moher et al., 2015) to guide our work and used ERIC, APA PsycInfo®, Social Service Abstracts, and ProQuest as the four major databases to identify target articles, supplemented by Google Scholar search and reference backtracking. Eighteen articles were included and analyzed in the systematic review and the findings are classified into four categories: language selection , language switching , benefits of multilingual counseling , and challenges of multilingual counseling. The findings illustrate that language selection is a rarely discussed but an important issue in multilingual counseling session. Language switching is a common phenomenon for multilinguals as a therapeutic strategy and changes power dynamics in counseling sessions. Despite the benefits of multilingual counseling to counselors and clients, challenges exist as well. Ongoing training and support are essential to help counselors manage the challenges they encounter in multilingual counseling and to improve their professional efficacy. The limitations and future directions of this study are also discussed.