Blog 11

The first ethical dilemma that I found to be extremely harmful to the student was from Thompson (2012) number 11.  It talked about a middle school counselor dealing with a student who had two suicide attempts and two hospitalizations.  It ended with the counselor hurrying the student out of their office with a suicide hotline number because the counselor felt it was for attention.  I believe that whether it was for attention or not, the student should not have been able to leave without the counselor asking why they didn’t want to go home and if they were feeling like they might harm themselves.  I also think that in this instance that there are other people in the school that can help, like the social worker.

            The second ethical dilemma from Thompson (2012) that really struck a cord with me was number 2.  In this case the student was struggling with sexual identity and the counselor believed in conversion therapy and wanted to help the student go back to their given sexual identity.  This is wrong and unethical for so many reasons, first off the counselor wanted the student to go to their church to get this counseling when the counselor knew that the student was becoming more comfortable with himself the way he was.  I don’t believe that it is ever a school counselor’s job to change a student to be anything other then what they are.  I think that’s inhumane on multiple levels and most definitely not our job.

            Lastly I choose number 19 from Thompson (2012) because of the multicultural diversity infused in it.  After just taking Multi-cultural Diversity this summer we actually went over a scenario just like this.  Adult conferences and passing of information should always be through adults never through the child/student.  Every school should have at least one adult in it that is able to speak Spanish and if there are not they need to hire one for instances like this.  What if the parent has to tell you they don’t have any money or can’t pay the bills, do they want their child hearing that? I’m sure they don’t.  The same with a teacher trying to convey an issue with their student, it needs to go to the adult and it shouldn’t go through the student to get there.

Reference

Dollarhide, C.T., & Saginak, K.A. (2012). Comprehensive school counseling programs

(2nd Ed.). New York: Pearson, Inc.

Froeschle & Crews, (2010). An ethics challenge for school counselors, p. 1-25.

Thompson, R.A. (2012). Professional School Counseling: Best practices for working

in the schools. New York; Rutledge