Raso jo Pareso as an Indigenous Value in Minangkabau Culture: A Literature Review on Counseling and Mental Health

Abstract

The escalating global mental health crisis underscores the need for culturally sensitive counseling approaches. “Raso jo Pareso” (feeling and reasoning), a fundamental value in Minangkabau philosophy, integrates affective and cognitive dimensions of human life and holds significant potential as an ethical and practical foundation for counseling services and mental health development. The aims of this article are: (1) to describe the values of Raso jo Pareso within the Minangkabau cultural context; (2) to identify the relevance of Raso jo Pareso in counseling services; and (3) to construct a Raso jo Pareso-based counseling framework for supporting individual mental health. A literature review method was employed, drawing on 16 relevant articles and books from various scholarly sources. The findings indicate that Raso jo Pareso shares strong conceptual alignment with humanistic counseling, strength-based approaches, and multicultural counseling. Specifically, the Raso dimension corresponds to counselor empathy competence, while the Pareso dimension relates closely to rational and reflective decision-making skills. The integration of Raso jo Pareso with contemporary counseling approaches is predicted to enhance the effectiveness of mental health services for individuals from the Minangkabau cultural backgrounds and Indonesia’s multicultural society at large.