The Ethical Status Of Psychological Counseling Among Secondary School Counselors——a Qualitative Research

Objective and SignificanceThe period of secondary school is important for the building and improvement of personality.During this period,students strive for independent and autonomy,at the same time,they average up their mental maturity.they are going to face a lot of problems,so,the service of psycholgical counseling is important.psychological consulting professional ethics is something important to protect the interests of the psychological clinic visitors as well as important content to standardize psychological consultants’ professional behavior. Because Middle school psychological consultation is meeting more complex ethics problems due to reasons like psychological teacher’ dual identity(mental health education teachers and counselors), most of the students are minors, parents and the teacher in charge of student counseling intervention, etc. Therefore, this research intends to adopt qualitative research method to understand high school psychology teachers’ standpoints of the ethical issues in the psychological consultation, to analysis the psychological teacher how to consult common ethical issues in the decision making process. This research presents the current situation of middle school psychological consultation and provides a reference for the further standardization of the profession development.MethodsUsing purpose sampling, this study adopts the chain type selection of Guangzhou city key middle school, secondary school, private school, total of11schools which altogether12full-time mental health education teachers as the object of this study. Base on precious experience, we stoped adding research object number by the reference standard the information needed saturated. Respondents have following sample characteristics:work full-time in middle school mental health education2years or more, the work content includes students psychological consulting services; Access to the national psychological consultant level3certificate or above. Researcher compiling open interview outline in advance, after revised preliminary interviews, researcher invited respondents by telephone interviews, with the object of study in their own school after permission psychological consulting room for interview. After the interview, interview recordings for transcription, then we got written materials, combining in-depth participatory observation data analysis. We mainly used the generic analysis and method of situational analysis, to understand the middle school psychology teachers’ ethics to extract meaningful content.Results1.Adaptive changes have taken place in confidentiality and informed consent in middle school psychological counseling, psychological teachers relent on the content of confidentiality when students need other help and they will disclose confidential information appropriately. When student’s consulting content clash with school norms, psychological teachers in determining the confidential disclosure will measure themselves as a academic personnel’s responsibility and the responsibility of the consultant. When students’consulting content and students’ ability are not match psychological teachers will measure students’ mental level and the degree of the serious problems before making a broken decession. Consultation record is an important part of confidentiality, the result shows that it has the risk of leakage.2.Psychological teachers’ competency shortcomings in the psychological consultation is more noticeable in crisis intervention. Psychological teachers lacking the ability to recognize mental illness, cannot discover the psychotic symptoms of students. Psychological teachers lack of referral resources, can’t provide students with appropriate referral services. When facing barriers in dealing with a mental illness student, psychological teachers’ disability cause school danger. Crisis intervention of middle school psychological teachers is limited by lacking of practice and training.3.The psychological teachers has a dual role of teachers and consultants, and they generally think of themselves as teachers with consulting function. To different students, the relationship between teachers and students in the psychological consultation for the establishment of the trust relationship with the dual role of promotion and hinder. In order to smoothly establish a counseling relationship, psychological teachers also consciously control the relationship between teachers and students.4.there are two attitude toward neutrality principle in psychological teachers Someone thought that atmosphere is hard to stick to neutral principle, school education and guide to infiltrate counseling, psychological teachers the role itself can influence the neutrality principle; other argued that neutral principle is very important, is the key to counseling to distinguish consulting from moral education. What is more, is also a sign of professional consultant performance.5.Colleagues in found that contrary to ethical and moral behavior, select report teachers consider themselves have the responsibility for campus safety, but there are challenges lead to non neutrality and may have potential damage to students. Those who choose not to report the teachers’ responsibility definition is not clear about teachers’responsibility partition and don’t take visitors benefit as the first consideration of ethical issues.6. School administrators’ irrational configuration to counseling time lead to psychological teacher’s psychological counseling work existed negligence of duty, fatigue advice, as well as the nonprofessional counseling time and number adjustment. The middle school psychology teachers’ salary system is unreasonable, the psychological teachers feel their work value has not been admitted, lead to value identity pressure, influence psychological teachers’ diligence attitude.Psychological counseling teachers’ working content lack of norms, psychological teachers decided their work according content by their oneself circumstance. Psychological counseling work is too little, cannot meet the student demand; Or work too much, beyond the consultants’ ability. Most of the middle schools have only one school psychology-teacher, when a greater range stressful school even occurs, the individual psychological teacher’s intervention scope is limited, the shortage of the intervention brings potential harm.Conclusions1.Secodary school counselors are clear about the general professional ethicsMost middle school psychological consultation teachers clear common counseling ethics, can do a good job in informed consent, confidentiality and neutral principles, consciously hold dual relationships with students. In ethical dilemma need to consider many factors shows middle school psychological consultation teacher’s ethical sensitivity is not enough, for not to conduct a comprehensive consideration of the interests of all parties involved, to make ethical decisions may lead to potential ethical issues.2.Psychological counseling ethics principles’ adjustment in school background——more loose and flexibleIn middle school, students are minors, and psychological consultant has a dual identity: teacher and consultant. Psychological consultant are responsible for school organizations, students and parents, these background factors make consulting confidentiality, informed consent principle, double relationship, in order to make a balance,the principle of neutrality are adaptive adjusted and changed.3.The necessity of school counseling ethics——the problem of ethical decision base on common sensePsychological teachers’psychological counseling work is currently not available for reference of ethics, neither teacher ethics training. In ethical decision making, psychology teachers often according to their common sense and judgment, few refer to the relevant laws and ethics of provisions to guide their own ethical decision-making, ethical decisions made so exists some obvious potential ethical issues. The lack of specification also makes the responsibilities and contents of psychological consultant work unclear, which leads to neglect of duty or buck-passing.4.The background factors that affect Ethical issues of secondary schoolMiddle school psychological consultation is on a low level of development, and most school managers think the importance of psychological counseling next to education. Limitation and unreasonable situation in school psychological counseling,such as time configuration, work content arrangement, psychological teacher’s pay structure, staffing has, the school system leads to psychological counseling responsibilities negligence, reduce professional and potentially harm students.Characteristics and innovation1.The results of this study shows middle school psychological teachers’ present situation of the ethical issues in the psychological consultation and psychological teachers’ counseling ethics consciousness. As well as the personal, social and cultural, professional development factors influence on ethics present situation. The research has provided a reference information for the relevant departments to improve middle school psychology teachers’ professional moral quality, formulation and solution of middle school psychological counseling work, is now one of the few domestic, deeply study of middle school psychological counseling ethics problems.2.This study adopted qualitative research methods, in view of the middle school psychology teachers themselves to discuss the understanding present situation of the psychological counseling ethics, compared with quantitative research, this study can understand its deep reason of ethical interpretation, at the same time it can also understand the ethics interpretation of the change process. Therefore this research study provides more personalized than ever before and vertical information.What needs to be improved and in-depth in this study1.In qualitative research, the researchers themselves are the most important research tools, researchers have its own characteristics and ability will inevitably influence the interview interactive emotions, opinions and attitudes of respondents, the deficiency of this study was, therefore, cannot exclude respondents due to concerns in the process of interview and unable to express the real ideas.2.The analysis method and results of in-depth interviews related to the researchers themselves knowledge background, way of thinking. So the inspection standard and objective conclusion lack of unified and effective evaluation standard, the conclusion of this study still need to further confirm and revise by subsequent research and related research.3.This study on the definition of the research question is broad, and the research conclusion is not specific, only understand current conditions on the surface, in a follow-up study, the researchers can study further on one specify counseling ethics problem in middle school.4.Due to the qualitative study sample size limitation, only the part of the typical middle school psychological teacher was interviewed in this study, so the result cann’t represent the national average level, cann’t as promotion to the general population as quantitative research. Future research can be conduct according to the study of information compiled questionnaires, large sample cross-sectional investigation, and make full use of the application value of this study.