Confidentiality With A Suicidal Client Essay Example

Jane Doe

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A counselor’s job requires a solid display of confidentiality when treating their patients. Patients must feel safe and comfortable when discusses their life with a therapist. Because of the intimate nature of the information shared between patient and therapist legal and ethical standards are required to be upheld. The discussion on the paper is in regard to the suicidal patients. When a patient expresses that they do not wish to be alive and prefer that they kill themselves, the therapist is placed in an ethical and legal dilemma.
Based on the situation of each client, the care giver must consider what an appropriate action to take is. Both ethically and legally the psychologist is sworn to honor the privacy of the client; however if the client seems incapable to handle him or herself, if the client is genuinely a risk to themselves or another, the therapist would be required to intervene by informing authorities of the suicide risk.
There are situations that are unique in this challenge that many counselors experience. If a patient is terminally ill in the last stages of the disease that he or she is battling, and then shares with the therapist the plans they have to kill themselves the care giver must make the best choice they feel in their hearts. When a person is already so close to death, suffers the pains of dying, and becomes physically reliant on others, the ethical decision would be to counsel them to realize that their presence is needed. Hopefully through therapy the ill patient will find some peace and happiness to achieve in the end of their journey.
My personal moral and ethical views on suicide are based on the individual’s reason for wanting to cut their lives short. If the reason is that they are unhappy because of mental illness related problems like addiction and depression, I would highly urge them to begin therapy. I would fight to convince my patient that the choice for suicide is wrong. If the patient is ill and tired of suffering, then I think that the autonomy of a patient takes precedence. The primary purpose of the psychologist who is caring for a terminally ill suicidal patient would be to ease the anxiety of death that is inevitable for them (Bleicher, 2011). Either way, as a therapist the ethical, moral, and legal dilemma of suicide is a difficult and painful subject that is unique to the individuals who are facing that as a question in their lives.

References

Bleicher, H. J. (2011). The experience of counseling the terminally ill and the best counseling
practices (Order No. 1490864). Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Full Text. (863467962). Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/863467962?accountid=458
Liégeois, A., PhD, & Eneman, M., M.D. (2012). Ethical aspects of the prevention of suicide in
psychiatry. Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry, 14(2), 140-149. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1082035025?accountid=458