What Ethical guidance does Psychologist follow?

Ethics are basic guidelines for the professional counsellors and psychologists, these ethics should be
followed by the psychologists performing therapy, counselling or researches. Ethics are important in
every field though they became more important in the fields like psychology because we deal with
humans and it is very critical to deal with most fragile species especially someone going through
stressful situations.

Ethical guidances are to guide a process and to make sure none, counsellor or client get harmed in any
way. Ethics were made to prevent client as well as counsellor to get harassed. It also determines the
values a counsellor should have, like respecting human rights, should ensure the safety of a client, a
counsellor should respect client-counsellor relation because it is not a usual friendship, it is a
therapeutic relationship and only meant to benefit and development of client and should terminate just
after the therapy ends.

Some major ethics a counsellor should follow during the counselling:

• Therapeutic relationship –

It is not a friendship or any casual relationship you made with the client, counsellor should
understand that this relationship will need after the therapy ends, counsellor need to make the
client comfortable, they need to make the client is comfortable and feel safe but this will not
end forever so the client should empower the client and not make him/her dependant.

•  Confidentiality –

It became mandatory to keep things to yourself as a counsellor because the client is sharing
his/her problems to you by trusting you, he/she might have shared things with his/her friends
and family but possibly he was not comfortable and not found them this much trustworthy.
Other than this, disclosing clients identity may lead them into some serious problems, e.g. if
someone is bisexual and they have not shared it with anyone possibly they are suffering to
accept it themselves and you shared it with someone who is also by chance known to them and
they start teasing the client, it is not only against the ethics but also not morally correct.

• Autonomy –

A client is coming to you to resolve his/her problem or stress which is affecting his/her daily
life, as a counselor you are required to empower him/her not only for current situations but also
for future references so that if he/she faces the same or similar problems in future they will
be able to deal by themselves. In this process, a counsellor needs to collect reasons for their behaviour
but it should be kept that client should be in governance to his/her life, the counsellor should not force
him/her to tell anything and should not interfere in his/her personal life.

• Informed consent –

Informed consent is something very important for not only for the client but from the counsellor
perspective as well, in foreign countries informed consent is taken in written form, it is not
taken as seriously in India, though consent is taken but not in written form, it is important for
the client so that they are aware of the process, therapies, pay and approx. sessions. From the
counsellors perspective, it is important so that he/she has clients consent for the therapies he/she
using and so that client should claim wrong things, it is proof that the client him/her self is
involving in therapy and is aware of everything.

• Trustworthy –

Counselling is the process build on trust and comfort, client should feel comfortable and
have trust in the client so that the process moves forward, its although counsellor’s responsibility to make
client trust him/her at first because he/she is already dealing with so many things but it became mutual
once the relation starts. Without trust counselling cannot happen, the client should trust the counsellor
about the information will not leak and the process is in the best interest of the client.

• Beneficence –

The whole process is actually for the betterment of client, a counsellor should keep in mind
that this should not be for personal use and if he/she wants to use his/her case for future references then
the counsellor makes clients permission. In reference to research, researchers should share benefits with
the participants.

• Non – Malfeasance –

As mentioned above it is for the betterment of client and not harassing client in any mean, be it
physically, economically, emotionally or mentally. It is important to respect his/her human
rights and NO HARM to the client in anyways, there are cases in foreign where client accused counsellor
of sexual harm so counsellor need to be extra conscious in term of this particular ethics, it can be very
harmful to the client in terms of use, and for the counselor in terms of misuse of this rule.

• Justice –

The client comes to you for treatment, they pay you for the therapies, a counsellor should
respect their and clients time and also the resources the client is using. Counsellor need to be fair to their
clients in term of gender, caste and religion, he/she should have no discrimination policy and should treat
every client equally and respect their human rights.

•  Self-respect –

The counsellor should take in notice their self-respect and should not do things that are morally
not right for the counsellor.

These are some major ethics that a counsellor should follow, but there are some moral principles that a
counsellor should have in terms of being a good counsellor they are empathy, sincerity, integrity,
resilience, respect, humility, competence, fairness, wisdom, courage and most important is human rights.