Managed Care: Ethical Considerations for Counselors

Key factors and trends in health care will have an impact on the ethical practice of counselors. Ethical challenges to clinical practice presented by trends in managed care are discussed in relation to the American Counseling Association (1995) Code of Ethics and Standards of Practice. Recommendations for practice are also included.     

Counseling Minors: Ethical and Legal Issues

This article discusses the ethical and legal dilemmas facing counselors who work with minors in the school system. From an ethical perspective, minors should be able to expect confidentiality; however, parents and guardians have certain legal rights that limit the rights of minors. The author uses a hypothetical case to address these concerns and offers intervention strategies used for empowering minor clients in counseling.     

Best Practices in the Multidisciplinary Assessment of Emotional Disturbances: A Primer for Counselors

Emotional and behavioral difficulties often interfere with children's acquisition of academic, career, and social skills. Counselors assume an important role in the mandated multidisciplinary evaluation of children with emotional disturbance (ED), but the field lacks a standard battery of assessment procedures for working with children who have ED. The authors review the current issues related to students with ED, describe instruments and procedures used to assess ED, and discuss the counselor's role in the assessment process.     

Ethical Dimensions of Diagnosing: Considerations for Clinical Mental Health Counselors

There are numerous ethical considerations inherent within the process of assigning a Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed., text rev.; DSM‐IV‐TR; American Psychiatric Association, 2000) diagnosis. In this article, general ethics considerations such as informed consent and confidentiality, accuracy of diagnosis, and multiple relationships are examined as they relate to clinical mental health counselors' use of the DSM‐IV‐TR. The article concludes with the authors' suggestions for ethically sensitive diagnostic practices.     

Renegotiating Sexuality Following an Acquired Disability: Best Practices for Counselors

Acquired physical disabilities are a critical issue that confronts many adults today, and they are projected to continue to increase over the next several years. For many individuals with acquired physical disabilities, the disabilities affect sexuality, thus requiring a renegotiation of disability and sexuality. This article reviews the extant literature on physical disabilities and sexuality and provides best practices for counselors to effectively address the needs of this growing population.     

Meditation and Appropriation: Best Practices for Counselors Who Utilize Meditation

Support for meditation is found across academic communities and popular culture. Although the application of meditative practices has yielded positive treatment outcomes, larger purposes of the practice are perhaps lost in the empirically driven West, thus driving a risk of appropriation. In response, the authors outline 4 implications for best practice for counselors who aspire to engage in the culturally responsible use of meditative practices.     

Ethical Guidelines for Counselors Working With Older Adults

Counselors working with older adults may encounter situations that are not directly addressed by the ethical standards of the American Counseling Association (1995). After an extensive review of the literature, the Standards Committee of the Association for Adult Development and Aging (1998) identified 3 areas of concern: older adults with cognitive impairments, older adults who are the victims of abuse, and older adults with a terminal illness. This article examines the unique needs of older adults with these concerns and proposes guidelines for counselors working with such clients.     

Best Practices for Counselors Who Treat Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

Counselors in settings as diverse as schools, corporations, and community agencies are well aware of the numbers of people in the United States who daily come in contact with stressors that are extreme and potentially traumatic. Automobile accidents, disasters, or encounters with interpersonal violence are ubiquitous. Professional counselors, regardless of their professional identification or the settings in which they work, are very likely providing services to many people who are in distress after traumatic exposures. These counselors would benefit from knowing what other mental health professionals consider to be best practices for preventing and treating posttraumatic stress disorders (PTSDs). The purpose of this article is to summarize for counselors those best practices that have been recently developed and published by a multidisciplinary expert group (E. B. Foa, J. R. T. Davidson, & A. Frances, 1999) in their article “Treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.”     

Substance Abuse Counselors in Recovery: Implications for the Ethical Issue of Dual Relationships

The issue of dual relationships is a significant ethical challenge for all counselors. For the counselor recovering from an addiction to substances, this issue can be even more problematic. Existing codes of ethics offer insufficient guidance to the recovering counselor. Following an overview of dual relationships, the author reviews the ethical codes of the American Counseling Association and the National Association of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Counselors, with particular attention paid to their applicability to the recovering counselor. Potentially difficult situations are considered, and recommendations are offered both for the recovering counselor and for the counseling field in general to minimize the incidence of unethical behavior due to dual relationship issues.     

Usefulness of Gati's Hierarchical Model of Vocational Interests for Career Counselors

Career counseling is complicated and involved, requiring counselors to use a conceptual framework to help guide them through the process. Using a case study, the author demonstrates how Gati's hierarchical model of vocational interests can assist counselors in working with clients concerned about their careers.     

Marketing of Professional Counselors: A Q‐Sort Study of Best Practices

This quantitative Q‐sort research was designed to evaluate representations of counselor qualifications and to determine which configurations account for the variance in consumer preference and selection. The sample consisted of 161 graduate and undergraduate students in a regional university in Texas. An iterative inverse factor analysis produced 3 distinct factors that accounted for 65.85% of the variance in the data, explaining a majority of the differences in how consumers perceive counselor credentials.     

论患者最佳利益原则

尽管何为患者最佳利益尚无法明确进行统一的界定,但是患者最佳利益原则在英国等西方国家已经上升为医事法律的基本原则.患者最佳利益原则由传统的伦理和道德标准上升为法律准则符合社会的发展和患者的利益诉求,亦有利于改善我国当前的医患关系状况,我国将来修订相关医事法律时应将患者最佳利益原则确立为基本法律原则.     

Collaborative Consultant: A New Role for Counselors Serving At-Risk Youths

School and community counselors have important roles in developing and implementing mental health programs for youths and families. Counselors who are working with the more complex issues of at-risk youths can enhance implementation of prevention programs by altering their roles to function within a collaborative consultation model. This model represents a new paradigm in that counselors interdependently and collaboratively partner with people previously considered their “consultees.” Such collaboration can result in more comprehensive and integrated programs, and it can prevent fragmentation and duplication of efforts. Collaborative consultation is described and contrasted with more traditional consultation models, and a 5-stage implementation process is presented. Personal and systemic factors that support the collaborative process are examined.