Counselor Confidentiality/Disclosure

Counselor Confidentiality and Disclosure

Introduction

The counseling process consists primarily of self-disclosure and self-confrontation on the part of the client , facilitated by interaction with the counselor . In for counseling to take place the client must disclose personal material to the counselor , who in turn tries to understand the client 's world in a context of what he or she knows about how people respond to life situations . Counselors are aware of their influential positions with respect to clients , and they avoid exploiting the trust and dependency of clients . Everyone has a

primary obligation to maintain the privacy of both current and former clients whether living or deceased , and to maintain the confidentiality of material that has been transmitted to them in any of their professional roles

Reasonable differences of opinion can and do exist among counselors with respect to the ways in which values , ethical principles and ethical standards should be rank ed when they conflict . Ethical decision making in a given situation must apply the informed judgment of the individual counselor and should also consider how the issues would be judged in a peer review process where the ethical standards of the profession would be applied

This adopts the main thesis that the clients confidentiality ranks number one in this ethical issue . By developing an oath of confidentiality , ethical considerations are not relegated to a secondary status , after business matters nor are they noted as afterthoughts . Without a clear directive , ethical oversight of the actions chosen through the strategic planning process lack this input

Counseling Values

Values are enduring . They motivate behavior . Judgments about right and wrong or good and bad are moral judgments based on values . In the course of human interactions , there are many situations in which it is difficult to make a decision because values come into conflict . Values must be clarified if moral decisions are to be reached . These values are easily seen during the counseling activity . While clients may reveal significant personal materials in their non-verbal behavior , the primary medium for counseling communication is verbal . Clients reveal their thoughts and feelings to a perceptive counselor by what they say , the affect with which they say it and by what they choose to obscure in their verbal material . The more fully self-disclosure takes place , the more fully the counselor can serve to help the client discover new ways of coping

Ethical practice may be defined as providing a helping service , for which one has been appropriately trained , with care and conscientious effort , Unethical practice occurs under three conditions : when the professional helper becomes involved with clients whose problems are beyond the scope of his or training when the helper exploits his or her position to collect fees or salary for incompetent service and when the helper fails to understand his or her obligation to respect a client 's rights to privacy and to free choice

It is fundamental for counselors to provide competent counseling service to clients . It is this trust that allows...