Online Counseling: Ethical Issues

Online Counseling: Ethical Issues

Online Counseling online from this Web site emphasizes the personal self and improved interpersonal bonds. Through various methods we offer assistance in self-knowledge, creativity, and deployment of potential, family relations, labor relations and social group dynamics, you will help, guidance and encouragement to resolve the situation which you're facing.

Once the behavior of those affected a threat to one's own welfare or that of any other person representing the consultant is forced to question the autonomy of the client in question. The same applies if the rights of third persons are affected. In critical situations, the consultant will be forced to break the trust with the client in order to avoid worse consequences. This has for example, threats of murder, suicide or violence done to others. The anonymity of the virtual environment more difficult in this context, however, timely intervention (Derrig, 2005).

Another principle is the welfare of clients. An improvement of the condition should be the focus of the efforts of the consultant. Again, there are a plethora of dubious offers to imply that such an effort, at the end but only the commercial profit in mind. As the client comes to grips with the advice is of secondary importance. But the offers have serious guarantee due to the special situation of communication problems on the Internet, this principle always. The purely text-based exchange may limit the possibilities offered by the consultant in relation to the welfare of the client (Derrig, 2005).

This view is consistent with the previously discussed idea of stimulus reduction. The counselor can capture using the text-based communication, only the content of these statements. The non-verbal behavior of clients in contrast, could provide an indication of the true sensitivities, if these are different from the statements in the text. The text is likely to leave only one aspect, or a distorted picture of reality. Because of this lack of information, the consultant could also arrive at a wrong conclusion on the client's problems. Consequently, the intervention would work in the wrong direction. The welfare of the client is not secured so final. Add to that the fact that a timely intervention in an emergency situation can be difficult (Kraus, 2004).

The consultant has no direct intervention. Cooperation with local advice centers, which could intervene in an emergency, the Internet is not always given advice. In order to ensure the welfare of the client, the consultant will be forced to break the principle of autonomy. The various ethical principles have to be weighed against each other in certain situations, to prevent damage to the client. It must in some cases the broken confidentiality in counseling and contact with external interventions is made. The welfare of the client would then weigh heavier than its legal autonomy.

The welfare of the client as an ethical principle is always a matter of interpretation. It may have different ideas prevail on the part of the consultant and the client, which is in a particular situation the best ...