Homosexuality: A Case Study: Respect For Confidentiality

Mr. Jo is undergoing a counselling session with his client, Alexander who is now 18 years old. Mr. Jo has been conducting these counselling sessions with Alexander for about three months. Along the sessions, Mr. Jo found out that Alexander is actually a homosexual in which he has feelings towards one of his classmate name Xavier. During the sessions, there were few times that Alexander disclosed his strong feelings towards Xavier to Mr. Jo. Initially, Alexander was just worried and shame about his sexual orientation as homosexuality is hardly acceptable in his culture. However, every and each time Alexander saw that there were many girls around Xavier, he began to feel uncomfortable and it leads him to become more and more anxious, jealous and even some hatred towards those girls. Mr. Jo as his counsellor felt that Alexander was having some serious issues going on as Alexander starts to perform badly in school and tend to show some symptoms of depression. As time goes by, Alexander showing up in Mr. Jo counselling session has become lesser and this causes Mr. Jo hardly to meet up with Alexander. One day, one of Alexander best friends name Derrick came to find Mr. Jo and told him that Alexander
Respect for Confidentiality. According to American Counselling Association (2014), counsellor has to safeguard the confidential information of his/hers client. In the case above, Mr. Jo has the choice to choose to believe what Alexander has conveyed without violating client’s confidentiality. In this case, Mr. Jo will be able to sustain a good therapeutic relationship with Alexander. In this way, Mr. Jo will be able gain more trust from Alexander in order to help him further. As Mr. Jo was not sure about whether Alexander actually has the intention to hurt others, he can choose to first maintain a good relationship with his client and to find out more information before breaching any confidentiality which might actually affect their therapeutic