Ethics meaning:
Ethics means moral principles that define a person’s behavior or it can be said the branch of knowledge that deals with moral principles.
Counselling meaning:
Counseling is a profession where a counselor assists and guides the personal or psychological problems of the client.
Ethics of counseling:
Counselors must deal with a variety of issues. Why should there be ethics in counseling is a question now. The reason for ethical codes in counseling is to ensure competent professional behavior, thus protecting clients from incompetent counselors which are very dangerous scenarios. These ethical standards also protect the profession from government and help in functioning autonomously.
Ethical principles:
Kitchener has given five moral principles which are as follows:
Autonomy, justice, beneficence, fidelity, nonmaleficence
- Autonomy: The concept of independence is addressed by this principle. The essence of this principle is allowing the client the freedom of choice and action. It is the responsibility of the counselor to encourage the clients to make their own decisions and to act on their own values.
- Justice: Herlihy and Corey define justice as our commitment to fairness. It includes several issues involved with counseling practice such as the counselor’s personal ethics, fee, and fairness in the counseling profession. It entails promoting customers' interests throughout their various social systems. Teaching the clients how to access the services and how to advocate for themselves within their communities.
- Beneficence: it means acting in the best interests of the clients based on professional assessment. It is the counselor’s responsibility to contribute to the welfare of the client. Counselors should do well and should be proactive and prevent harm when possible to the client.
- Fidelity: it involves loyalty, faithfulness, and honoring commitments. If clients are to grow, they must be able to put their faith in the counselor and the online counseling therapeutic relationship. The counselor should take care not to threaten the therapeutic relationship or to leave obligations unfulfilled.
- Non-maleficence: it means to do no harm which counselors do not undertake and avoid any activity that could be detrimental to the client. It is the obligation of the counselor not to harm the patient.
By nature of the profession, the counselor is to act in the best interest of the client, promoting client goals, protecting rights, doing good, and doing no harm to the client. This expectation broadens due to the inherent power of the relationship between the client and the counselor. Ethics aim to balance power and ensure that the counselor works for the good of the client and not for the self. Counsellor’s duty is primarily to care for the client. Counseling does not occur in a vacuum so it is important that counselors acknowledge all facets of their practice both internally and externally. A complete awareness of the ethics of a situation can occur when body, mind, heart, and spirit all are taken into consideration. Wholly as a holistic approach.
. The challenge lies in what is considered moral or ethical. Each professional counselor enters the field with a unique set of values and standards. Individual principles and how they are used to interpret dilemmas would be universally different. So, a code of ethics is a general standard that counselors and therapists adhere to and use jointly with legal standards to provide ethical practice and work through ethical dilemmas as required. Psychology is an interesting and at the same time intricate profession. A counselor or a therapist should be very careful while dealing the clients. While for every physical illness, there will be a proper diagnosis n treatment, which can be done by that particular professional. But when u take mental illness, it is totally different. Of course, there is some specified illness where we can categorize patients into those like schizophrenia, amnesia, etc. but even in those illnesses also different people will be acting in different ways, unlike physical illness. So, it is a very sensitive thing to deal with such clients. Sometimes one cannot go according to the bookish knowledge in treating clients because every client is diff and will not behave according to book symptoms so it is the professional who has to consider the minute details of the client and treat accordingly.
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