Couples or Marriage counseling focuses on improving the communication between couples, resolving their problems by lending the stressed couple insight into the issues, thereby enhancing relationship clarification, it is also a type of psychotherapy to help the clients to work on their relationship issues and get resolved with couple therapy sessions.
This article looks at how the fundamental ethical requirements of practice differ in relation to couple and family work: competence, juggling multiple imperatives, boundaries, confidentiality, and informed consent. Its aim is not to provide rules for management, but to raise awareness and foster Dialogue about perennial issues in practice.
Couple & family counseling ethics-
Another counseling situation in which ethical crisis are common in couple and family counseling (Corey et al., 2015;Wilcoxen et al.,2013). The reason is that counselors are treating a number of individuals together as a a system, and it is unlikely that all members of the system have the same goals. To overcome potential problems, Thomas (1994) has developed a dynamic, process- oriented framework for counselors to use when working with families. This model discusses 6 values that affect counselors, clients, and the counseling process:
a) Responsibility
b) Integrity
c) Commitment
d) Freedom of choice
e) Empowerment
f) Right to grieve.
Couple Therapy
Couples therapy has been found to be an efficacious treatment for persons with substance use problems. Therapy programs which have included spouses have been found to be effective in motivating patients to enter and continue treatment. They have also been associated with better outcomes in treatment such as lower substance use, longer periods of abstinence and better marital functioning. The theoretical framework underlying couples therapy is an understanding of substance use and marital discord as being cyclic. Problems in the marital relationship, poor communication and poor problem solving may precede harmful use of substances, and dysfunctional relationships can maintain and facilitate the substance use.
Family Therapy
The focus of substance abuse treatment worldwide is shifting from corrective to a preventive approach. This is due to the fact that the age of developing substance related problems is reducing and impacting the youth. Effective treatment for adolescents is suggested to be one that brings about change in various domains of a young individual’s life and context. This necessitates family therapy and combined family and community based interventions for adolescent substance abuse. The therapist and the family should be equal participants in the therapeutic process. Including adolescents’ parents into any treatment program increases the likelihood of treatment adherence and compliance. As a result, family involvement and post treatment support facilitate successful outcomes in treatment of adolescent substance abuse.
Conclusion
Couple and family therapy is challenging, exciting, and complicated work. There is surprising little in writing to guide us, few books directly on the specific subject of ethics and relational practice (e.g., Hecker, 2010; Wilcoxon et al., 2007, the former with a new edition forthcoming in 2016). As a profession, we need to put these in place to provide leadership to new entrants into the field. However, even at its best it won’t be definitive legal and ethical guidance; in practice we will always be required to grapple collaboratively and individually with practice decisions (Butler et al., 2010).
Therapists are responsible for protecting clients. Couple and family therapists consider the many potential courses of action when evaluating ethical decisions; they evaluate the impact of that decision on the individual, the family, and the relationships between family members and the therapist, and the larger systems involved. Ethics in couple and family therapy is not about moralizing; it is about knowing one’s self and biases, working to understand the context and worldview of the client, and making collaborative ethical decisions that best benefit clients.
REFERENCE-
1. Australian Association of Family Therapy (AAFT) (2015). Code of Ethics. Melbourne, Vic.: AAFT. Australian Association of Relationship Counsellors (AARC) (2012). Code of Ethics. North Fitzroy, Vic.: AARC.
2. Australian Association of Social Work (AASW) (2010). Code of Ethics. Canberra: AASW. Australian Psychological Society (2007). Code of Ethics. Melbourne.
3. Betan, E.J., & Stanton, A.L. (1999). Fostering ethical willingness: Integrating emotional and contextual awareness with rational analysis. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 30 (3), 295–301. Brown, J., (2007).
4. Therapy with same sex couples: Guidelines for embracing the subjugated discourse / Challenging the stereotypes of gay male and lesbian couples; A research perspective, in E. Shaw & J. Crawley (Eds.), Couple Therapy in Australia (pp. 77–87; 287–311). Melbourne: PsychOz Publications.
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