Ethical Dilemma: Working As A Substance Abuse Counselor To Counsel Gays When It's Against My Jamaican Nationality

Ethical Dilemma: Working As A Substance Abuse Counselor To Counsel Gays When Its Against My Jamaican Nationality

Introduction

Ethics is a general term used is used for supercilious and philosophical discussion, talking far behind the everyday world. It is a real time fact that people who work in substance abuse filed are constantly facing ethical dilemmas not only on the individual level but also on the societal level. Ethics is defined to be an intellectual approach to handle and follow the moral issues. It is based upon the philosophical frameworks which critically evaluate the actions and doings of people who deal with multiple aspects of working in different field in their real life (NASW, 1997).

Working in the substance abuse and treatment field presents the person to a number of ethical issues which are related to the personal beliefs, moral, values and judgments. The history of how the existing society and the moral values take the person and his addictive behaviors confused with emotions, biased feelings that greatly affects the care of drug abusers. It is not considered to be an unusual case if a patient in health care setting leaves a negative impression of being called as a drug abuser. Since the substance abuse and treatment field is linked up to the highly charged emotional nature, the health care providers must discover the tools of dealing with the ethical dilemmas. This is the best strategy to devise a plan and proceed in the most ethical course of action (Rockville, 2000).

Discussion

Substance abuse controller's performance and attitudes towards gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered (LGBT) client's shows that they can recover well and show greater improvements. LGBT people prevails more commonly in urban areas, therefore urban treatment program is a great success. This makes urban substance abuse controllers with grater knowledge and experience for their services towards the LGBT community. LGBT do not have much understanding and positive attitude towards the reporting and knowledge for the specific ethical issues which they face. The alcohol abuse and drug treatment influence them up to the greater extent. A study was conducted in Chicago and Iowa to determine the attitudes carried by substance abuse controllers and identified that they need specific knowledge and formal education on how to treat he LGBT clients and over the ethical dilemma. The need to know the needs of LGBT and almost half of the subjects in study reported of negative attitudes. They did not have sufficient knowledge on the legal and ethical issues, power of attorney and partnership. The ethical issues were also related to domestic partnership, internalized homophobia, issues of the family origin and current family status.

Substance abuse controllers can play a significant role to effect the thinking and recovery of their clients and thus increases the chances of recovery (Bell et.al, 1997). The recognition is based on the fact that the substance abusers and misusers treatment patterns and models are based on ...