paper Essays - Mental Health Professionals, Confidentiality, Secrecy

Counseling is a complex profession bound by a series of ethical guidelines that many other people are not (Course Hero, n.d.). Trained therapists can be a great help to their clients, but can also sometimes perform a great disservice to them (Course Hero, n.d.). Many of these codes of ethics that counselors are made to follow are instrumental in how effective one can be with their patient. For example, much like doctors, counselors are bound to confidentiality Sometimes this can raise certain ethical dilemmas such as if it were revealed that the patient has committed a crime. (Course Hero, n.d.) In other cases, the counselor may discover a drug addiction, but be limited in the steps that can be taken to help their client with the problem. Dr. Rich points out that counselors are, (Course Hero, n.d.) "not policemen" and are not, "[their] client's mother". (Course Hero, n.d.) Instead, he argues, counselors should view themselves as a helper and as a catalyst for change that the client wants to achieve, rather than as the sole initiator. "Urging the client to seek help themselves is a critical step in adhering to the ethics both set forth by the American Psychological Association and binding the counselor to the assurance of getting their client the help that is needed."(Course Hero, n.d.)There are five basic principles of the codes of ethics that counselors must abide by: beneficence - or accepting responsibility for promoting what is good for others (enhance the client's well being) - non-maleficence - or doing no harm; avoiding activities that have a high risk of hurting clients - autonomy - meaning the clients are the self-determiners and weigh the consequences of their own actions, and that client dependency should be decreased while independent decision making is fostered - justice - the equal and fair treatment of all clients - and fidelity - or the honoring of commitment to clients. These five moral values are the basis upon which the professional ethics o f counseling are built. Understanding these five principles lends to derivation of the entirety of the professional code. Counselors must also provide informed consent, meaning that clients understand all the ethical and moral considerations that counselors must adhere to, understand their rights of privacy and the limitations of this confidentiality, and know their rights to access all files pertaining to their sessions.The majority of the ethical requirements for counselors are created for a twofold purpose, being both to serve the client and to serve the counselor. It is ideal if the morals of the counselor never come in to play. In other words, responsibility should be deferred to a larger body that sets forth the code of ethics than to each counselor who must make determinations on the spot. For example, the requirements of confidentiality are such that no information about any client may be revealed to any source at any time unless the client poses a danger to themselves or ot hers, is under 16 or over 65 and a victim of physical or sexual abuse, threatens physical or sexual abuse to persons under 16 or over 65, or unless part of a court action. By setting forth these rigid guidelines, individual counselors are not required to rely on a stand of personal morality to make determinations but must, instead, adhere to an outside body's ethical rules. The primary effect of ethical issues on counselors is to establish a method of protection for both counselor and client with an accepted and orthodox set of guidelines that do not challenge or call into consideration the individual morals of the people involved. In this way, ethics' is separated from morals'. A non-denominational set of ethics established for the safety of persons bound by said set prevents snap moral decisions that would result in a variation between counselors. These ethical guides present a method of unifying and normalizing the profession of counseling