Read the Passage! Do you agree or disagree, or can you relate to his or her opinion in the post? ADD any thoughts or additional information that you may have found concerning their topic?
Ethical and legal dilemmas in counseling can be challenging to discuss because it can be problematic to define sanctioned conduct. Counseling has a young history and often counselors disagree about what defines professional and acceptable behavior. Every counselor has their own opinions of acceptable or ethical behavior. Counselors’ opinions vary depending on what state that they reside, the type of degree that they have, their training, the institution that they work in, and the type of clients they counsel. Some ethical dilemmas that counselors may face are reporting child abuse, practicing without the proper credentials, reporting or determining whether a client was suicidal, sexual improprieties, maintaining confidentiality, and maintaining boundaries (Kottler & Shapard, 2015).
For instance, a New York psychiatrist, Dr. Douglas H. Ingram, was sued in a federal court in Connecticut by family members of a young boy who was sexually molested by one of Dr. Ingram’s patients. Child Psychiatrist Dr. Joseph DeMasi was the accused child abuser who told his counselor, Dr. Ingram, that he had a strong infatuation with the young boy and had strong urges to be in sexual relationships with his young patients. Dr. Ingram did not report Dr. DeMasi and four months later Dr. DeMasi sexually abused the ten-year-old male victim at the Danbury Hospital in Connecticut. The family sued Dr. Ingram because they believed that Dr. Ingram could have done something to prevent the abuse. The jury found Dr. Ingram to be negligent in a pedophile case (Bruni, 1998).
To prevent ethical and legal issues, counselors should read and study the code of ethics for the state in which the counselor resides and the National Code of Ethics (ACA’s Code of Ethics) (Kottler & Shapard, 2015). In my opinion, counselors such as Dr. Ingram should also face criminal charges alongside the perpetrator because Dr. Ingram knew Dr. DeMasi’s intentions of sexually abusing young children. Dr. Ingram was warned, and he chose not to alert the law enforcement. I know that it is a fine line between knowing when to break the code of silence between a counselor and patient and knowing when not to, but in cases that a client is telling the counselor that he or she is going to harm someone else or themselves, I belive the issue should be addressed with law enforcement.
