Autonomy In Professional Counseling

Essay #1: Ethical Principles in Professional Counseling

Autonomy

The principle of autonomy is to consider the clients’ rights on making their own decisions when resolving their own conflicts. The counselor cannot tell them what to do in order to resolve their problems. The counselor encourages the client’s personal growth while respecting the client’s culture, personal values, and belief. Corey et al, (2015) states that supervision counselors that are being trained, must learn that there is no need to surrender their own values and beliefs; however, they should learn to leave their own personal values and beliefs out of the counseling sessions (p.75).

Nonmaleficence

The principle of non-maleficence is “do no harm” to the clients. The APA

The mental health counselor received a new client that is seeking counseling; however, that client was actually one of the counselor’s close friend who knew the counselor for many years. The counselor seemed surprised that her closest friend was seeking help, and the counselor was the only professional mental health counseling practicing in the small community that matched the description of the services needed by the client (her closest friend). The counselor is feeling unsure that she can provide a good clinical insight/judgement for her client and whether or not she should continue seeing her friend as a client. The counselor sees herself in a predicament of what decision will be the most effective that could benefit the client’s wellbeing as well as the counselor’s ethical

Possible consequences are that the counselor could harm the client by not providing the professional services needed as general counselor in a small community.

Option 2 and Consequence: The counselor could accept to seek the client which is a close friend of the counselor, and provide the professional services that the counselor is trained to provide, including explaining the client the benefits of the services, limitations, consent, confidentiality, and responsibilities. The consequence could be if the client still sees the counselor as a friend and not as a professional counselor and they could eventually stop coming for sessions and affect the friendship in the long run.

Option 3 and Consequence: The counselor could explain to the client (which is the counselor’s friend) the reason why the counselor could not be beneficial for the client; and that the client should seek counseling with a person that the client doesn’t have a friendship with. The counselor needs to avoid doing harm to the client and promote wellbeing for the client. The counselor could offer the client to be referred to the closest community