Personal Ethical Dilemma Paper

Personal Ethical Dilemma Paper and Presentation

Duty to warn and confidentiality is a dilemma that professionals face when working with minors. Students often face issues that require the counselor, staff or teachers to report potentially harmful behavior towards themselves or others. Professionals must determine when it is appropriate to break confidentiality and when it is appropriate to not break the client’s confidentiality. Students in grades 10-12, are pre-adults that often struggle with typical teen behaviors, due to their age, making it more difficult for school counselors to know if the need is imminent or emotionally based. Suicide, depression, eating disorders, abuse, bulling and neglect. Counselors are obligated to protect society,

“The conditions are (1) the existence of a special (e.g., therapist-client) relationship, (2) the presence of a reasonable prediction of conduct that constitutes a threat, and (3) knowledge of a foreseeable victim. Those conditions have been used throughout the years to help define when duty-to-warn exists” (1997). When working with minors, the duty to warn is important and often requires more people to become involved, such as parents, school administration, human services and other professionals or law enforcement. In a dilemma where a 17 year old junior in high school has been becoming thinner and thinner over a short period of time. The school counselor noticed and began to make it a point to pay closer attention to the student and talk to her whenever she would see her in passing. The counselor must decide her course of action. In this situation, as a school counselor, my obligation would be to protect this student from further harm. I would consult with other counselors, according to standard C.2.e., ACA code of ethics (2005). The student’s records would need to be reviewed to see if the concerns were ever an issue in the past. Depending on the information gathered from the steps taken, I would notify the

Although parents have a right to know, according to ACA Code of Ethic, 2005, B.5.b., the students have rights as well, standard B.5.a Responsibility to Clients (ACA, 2005). Students between the grades of 10-12 are adolescents on their way into to adulthood. The issues within this population can be described as “typical teen” behavior, learning experiences or natural development, when in fact the student could be suicidal, depressed or homicidal. In school settings, the 10-12th grade population have learned to master ways to conceal what their reality is, causing it to be not completely clear when a student is just going through a phase in their life, or suffering from a life struggle. Therefore placing more responsibility on the counselor to be able to determine the difference and make the necessary steps to “protect” the potential victim. The confidentiality struggle is ethical but also legal for student counselors on a daily basis as to know when to invoke confidentiality at the expense of a parent’s right to know and when it is time to involve parents so they can intervene on behalf of their child. The ASCA Ethical Standards emphasize that school counselors have a primary obligation and loyalty to students, yet the ethics honor and recognize that counselors also have an obligation to parents primarily because