Dr. Stephen Wiw Bichiok
Abstract
Marriage counselling in South Sudan sits at the intersection of indigenous authority, family systems, cultural continuity and an emerging professional mental-health sector. This article moves beyond a traditional-versus-modern binary by examining how the two counselling systems can be compared, bounded and selectively integrated into a culturally responsive framework for marital support. The analysis is drawn principally from Objectives 4 and 6 of a mixed-methods doctoral study on traditional marriage counselling and marital stability in South Sudan. A descriptive cross-sectional questionnaire was completed by 242 respondents from 250 distributed instruments, giving a 96.8% response rate. The instrument included six items on traditional marriage counselling, five contextual items on marital stability and four items on psychological counselling and integration, supplemented by open-ended questions. Quantitative analysis used descriptive statistics, Cronbach’s alpha, Spearman correlation, exploratory group comparisons and regression, while open-ended responses were analysed thematically.
Respondents expressed strong support for both traditional counselling (M=4.30, SD=0.79, alpha=0.849) and psychological counselling/integration (M=4.09, SD=0.85, alpha=0.765). Support for traditional counselling was positively associated with support for psychological counselling and integration (Spearman’s rho=0.440, p<.001). In open-ended responses, 62.0% of respondents were coded as explicitly favouring a combination of traditional and professional counselling. The findings indicate that traditional counselling contributes cultural legitimacy, accessibility, family linkage and reconciliation, while contemporary counselling contributes structured assessment, confidentiality, evidence-informed relationship skills, safeguarding and specialist referral. The resulting framework therefore rejects both uncritical preservation and wholesale replacement. It proposes a seven-stage pathway comprising cultural and relational intake, safety screening, appropriate support selection, collaborative counselling, relationship-skills intervention, consentbased family/community linkage, and follow-up/referral. The framework is intentionally selective, voluntary, culturally adaptive and safety-sensitive. Its central contribution is to recast integration as a governed clinical-community interface rather than a simple blending of two counselling traditions.
Download the pdf file BEYOND THE TRADITIONAL–MODERN DIVIDE: DEVELOPING AN INTEGRATED CULTURALLY RESPONSIVE PSYCHOLOGICAL COUNSELLING FRAMEWORK FOR MARRIAGE IN SOUTH SUDAN
