The Role of Religion Plays in Counselling - Research Paper Example

?In Weld and Eriksen (2007), the the increasingly important role that spirituality and religion plays in counseling generally. In addition to describing the increasing prevalence of faith-based treatment in the United States, the authors take the next step by noting certain normative problems that arise with using religion and faith heavily in a counseling session. Some of these issues include client welfare, multicultural sensitivity, values, and countertransference (p.125). Because of the majority Christian beliefs in the United States, these ethical issues are particularly relevant for counselors who rely on the power of prayer within sessions. Using prayer as an intervention within sessions requires a delicate awareness of an individual client on the part of the counselor. Likewise, with a secular counselor, there is a potential for weakness in the intervention that might render it ineffective or, even worse, harmful for the individual client. With these considerations in mind, the authors consider ethical mandates, articulate concerns, and make recommendations with respect to how to safeguard faith-based interventions from becoming useless or harmful and how to utilize those methods effectively. The authors begin their consideration with a brief description of the prevalence of prayer and spirituality within the counseling community of the United States. Among the highlights of these considerations is the fact that a vast majority of Christian-based counseling agencies (76 percent to 100 percent) believe that prayer is an appropriate intervention for clients, in contrast to 11 percent of secular agencies believing that prayer is appropriate for clients. Within the marriage and family counseling community, a vast majority (95 percent) believe that spiritual and mental health is related. However, only a slight majority (62 percent) actually utilized the spiritual dimension in their practice. This differential might be due to a lack of education on how to successfully integrate the two dimensions and the relative novelty of considering spirituality in a counseling practice (p. 126). Bearing in mind how widespread the use of faith-based interventions is in clinical practice, particularly with Christian-based counselors, the authors move on to consider the ethical responsibilities of counselors. These responsibilities ultimately reduce to promoting “the welfare of clients” and avoiding “harming their clients” (p. 127). To promote client welfare and avoid harm, the authors recommend that all counselors take an initial assessment of clients to evaluate their spirituality, which involves asking directed questions. Next, the authors recommend determining whether using spirituality in the treatment could harm or benefit clients. For instance, clients with mental health problems “may act out their problems religiously” (p. 128). Therefore, it is necessary to ensure that an individual is religiously mature before proceeding with an intervention based on spirituality. Knowing when prayer could be helpful or harmful will reduce the risk of incorporating certain kinds of therapies, according to the authors. Although prayer with less developed clients might increase superficial faith through insecure prayer, prayer with more developed clients might facilitate growth and self-awareness. All of these steps require a high degree of training on the part of the counselor (p.131). Additionally, faith-based interventions require a great amount of multicultural sensitivity, especially with an increasingly diverse population. In addition to specifying that counselors should promote the welfare and avoid harm to their clients, the ACA Code of Ethics also states that counselors should recognize diversity and embrace a cross-cultural approach, which refers to the identification of differences between individuals. Just like individual differences are crucial to deciding whether clients are spiritual mature enough for prayer in-session, counselors need to recognize and use vocabulary and imagery that is congruent with the client’s faith experiences (p. 132). In addition, secular counselors should build an open-mind with respect to spirituality in practice and start to educate themselves on how to effectively integrate the dimensions. With respect to values, the authors urge practitioners to follow the Code of Ethics with regard to not imposing their values on clients. Among these values are spiritual values. An issue counselors should address, if they wish to include prayer in the counseling, includes their clients’ preferences with regard to prayer. If, for instance, a client visiting a Christian agency does not believe or value the use of prayer, the Christian counselor should not take the opportunity to impose his or her values on the client (p. 133). Likewise, a secular counselor who does not believe in the value of religion generally should not take the opportunity to dissuade his client of the usefulness or value of spirituality during their sessions. Doing so might harm the client and should instead seek to use the client’s religious values in a productive way, rather than involving their own selves in the process. By steering clear of involving the counselor’s self in this process, even clients and counselors who differ considerably with respect to their religious worldview and spiritual interventions can have a productive and beneficial interaction. Lastly, the authors warn about countertransference, which is the redirection of a counselor’s feelings toward a client. Avoiding countertransference requires an amount of personal detachment from the emotional wellbeing of a client, which is seldom easy when spiritual issues become apparent. Although self-examination is important for a counselor, this self-awareness may be hampered by “unresolved issues from damaging experiences with or without religion” and countertransference may emerge in both religious and secular counselors. The easiest way to prevent this phenomenon is by overcoming their own problems and troubles with religious beliefs, which could open up new avenues of faith-based treatments for those clients who are developmentally ready (p. 134). From the client’s perspective, a protection from countertransference could be a system of referrals to counselors who share the client’s worldview or who are trained to address spiritual issues (p. 135). Personally, I believe Weld and Eriksen (2007) is a timely contribution to the counseling ethics literature, particularly with respect to the continued relevance of spirituality in contemporary life. Although the ethics of the counselor is an interesting and relevant subject, another topic that ought to receive attention in the literature is the ethical systems of clients and how counselors should come to address how clients interact with both themselves and others. This subject is particularly relevant to religiously oriented clients because a majority of them will likely draw from their respective religions with respect to their own personal moral code. A challenge for the counselor in some cases may be when moral codes (as correctly or incorrectly) drawn from religious texts, may conflict with an individual’s own happiness or personal well-being. For instance, if a Christian reads the Scriptures and develops a clear idea of the proper ethical code being to sacrifice oneself categorically in service of others, which is ultimately inconsistent with his or her mental well-being, it is up to the counselor to identify that ethical system and challenge it. However, since the ethical responsibility of a counselor is to not impose values on his or her client, it seems difficult that a counselor could challenge his or her clients’ religious interpretations in order to overcome that barrier to mental health. This is an issue that could perhaps be addressed in the literature with respect to the intersection between religion and counseling practice, but is not addressed in Weld and Eriksen (2007). Another issue that I thought could have been addressed in Weld and Eriksen (2007) is the added qualifications needed for Christian counselors. Although it is necessary for counselors to be properly trained in the same methods and theories that secular counselors receive training in, I feel it is necessary for counseling professions to clearly establish what certifies or qualifies a particular counselor to be a Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or any religious counselor. Having set standards would avoid both fraud and unethical conduct on the part of a counselor claiming to belong to one group or another. Additionally, this has direct implications on whether it is ethical or not to include spiritual interventions in a session because if a counselor is not trained on how to be spiritually sensitive, then it is very unlikely that any spiritual intervention that he or she will try will succeed. As Weld and Eriksen (2007) advocated, counselors need to conduct their own self-examinations in order to avoid countertransference and to avoid imposing their own values on their clients. It is difficult for a counselor and a client to connect on a spiritual level, when that is what the client is seeking, if the counselor lacks the proper insights and self-awareness that comes about through religious training. One last issue that I would like to raise against the reading is the contradiction between the empirical, scientific-mindedness of counseling psychology and the spirituality-oriented practices being evaluated in Weld and Eriksen (2007). Although psychology represents itself as a science, it is extraordinarily difficult to formulate scientific principles (or even best practices) around the mystical or spiritual beliefs of individuals. On this point, one could argue that from an ethical perspective, incorporating spirituality into counseling principles undermines counseling practice itself and therefore ought to be avoided. However, the authors dismiss this kind of perspective as “extreme” on the basis that it ignores the ethical imperative of “respect for human diversity” (p. 131). This argument does not hold much weight, since human diversity could refer to any number of things, including race, ethnicity, and gender, not including value-driven worldviews or personal belief systems. Given the challenge that religious integration poses to the integrity of counseling psychology as science, it might be preferable to recognize only secular practices as truly legitimate. In sum, I found Weld and Eriksen (2007) to be very informative about the ethical challenges posed in the integration of spirituality and counseling. All of these issues should be addressed immediately in order for the counseling practice as a whole to conform to the rules of the ACA Code of Ethics. Christian counselors might regard the Bible as the ultimate code of ethics, which could pose a problem for more religiously oriented counselors to accept the precepts put forward in the article. Aside from that problem, counselors should not have a problem evaluating and acting upon the spiritual needs of their clients. However, beyond what was set forward in Weld and Eriksen (2007), I believe there is an additional need to evaluate what exactly qualifies a Christian-, Muslim-, or Jewish-focused counselor to ensure that clients are not being harmed. In addition, counseling psychology should decide whether or not integrating religion into its study of principle and practice conflicts with its commitment to empirical science. Read More