Ethical Issues in Couseling Confidentiality Essay

Ethical Issues in Counseling: Confidentiality According to Code of Ethics of the American Mental Health Counselors Association (2000) it has the following principle about confidentiality: At the outset of any counseling relationship, mental health counselors make their clients aware of their rights in regard to confidential nature of the counseling relationship. â€Å"They fully disclose the limits of, or exceptions to, confidentiality, and or the existence of privileged communication, if any. (Corey, Schneider Callanan, 2011) This previous paragraph clearly stating what our ethical approach to confidentiality should be can be found in section 3.a in the Code of Ethics of the AMHCA. This paper starts with this probably confusing to others†¦show more content†¦Speaking of ways that the Code of Ethics may be â€Å"broken† what do we do when is a life threatening situation like AIDS and there is a 3rd party involved? And What if it is a minor? What should we as counselor do? Will we be breaking the code of ethi cs? These are questions that rose in my mind when searching for articles for this paper and it is important to cover them. According to Elliot D. Cohen in his article titled â€Å" Confidentiality, counseling, and Clients who have AIDS: Ethical Foundations of a Model Rule† he points out that the Ethical Standards of the American Association of Counseling and Development (AACD) â€Å" the counseling relationship and information resulting therefrom must be kept confidential, consistent with the obligations of the member as a professional person† (AACD,1988,Section b.2) meaning that all information that is shared in a counseling session should be kept confidential, as a secret between client and counselor, and that is something that when we hear the word confidential we immediately think no information will be shared with anybody else, but there is certain circumstances where this ethical code might not apply. If you find out for a fact, that your client, that you have been treating has a life threatening disease like AIDS, and is having sexual relations with another person things might change a little,