Ethical Dilemmas in Counseling and Working with Diverse Clients Free Essay Example, 1250 words

Counselors may find it difficult to compartmentalize their feelings and values in counseling clients with beliefs different from theirs. In case a counselor would now fail to compartmentalize his feelings and values and use his own values to counsel the client, the multicultural client may now feel that he is misunderstood, that the counseling session is ineffective, or that counseling is a discriminatory practice as it fails to consider his values or culture (Sadeghi, Fischer, House, 2003). In these instances, counseling then becomes about the counselor, not anymore about the client. Counselors may find it difficult to compartmentalize their feelings and values in counseling clients with beliefs different from theirs. In case a counselor would now fail to compartmentalize his feelings and values and use his own values to counsel the client, the multicultural client may now feel that he is misunderstood, that the counseling session is ineffective, or that counseling is a discri minatory practice as it fails to consider his values or culture (Sadeghi, Fischer, House, 2003). In these instances, counseling then becomes about the counselor, not anymore about the client. In a paper by Muller and Desmond (1992), the authors set out to assess the ethical dilemmas counselors face in counseling the Chinese. One of the main dilemmas is on issuing bad news or revealing an unfavorable medical diagnosis. In most cultures, relaying the news directly to the family is often preferred and is expected. However, for the Chinese, it is not a favored practice because they believe that when a person is sick, he should be treated like a child (Muller Desmond, 1992). They believe that acknowledging or mentioning the fact that a person is about to die or is really sick is a bad omen; it is as good as goading fate into taking the patient s life or making his condition worse. The dilemma for some counselors and for others in the health profession is on being honest, and on living up to the principles of full disclosure; this is weighed against a patient s values and beliefs which may not be true but because he believes it to be true can still make the patient even more anxious and desperate about his health situation. We will write a custom essay sample on Ethical Dilemmas in Counseling and Working with Diverse Clients or any topic specifically for you Only $17.96 $11.86/page