The Forester-Miller and Davis article was used to analyze the situation present. First, it is necessary to identify the problem, its type, and key aspects. It is hard to tell if the problem is specifically ethical or clinical. Therefore, it would be correct to consider both of these aspects. In this situation, it is necessary to decide whether the client’s request should be satisfied, and regarding the issues that are faced by her, the problem can be considered ethical. On the other hand, she experiences clinical issues with her substance abuse and anxiety, which are necessary to be considered, so claiming that the problem is clinical would not be wrong either.
Further, the ACA Code of Ethics should be applied to ensure that all ethical aspects are addressed properly. In this case, it seems like ethical principles provided by the ACA Code of Ethics and the ones presented in the Forester-Miller and Davis article bring a conflict. It occurs between two aspects: the duty to care for the welfare of a client and justice. In terms of these guides, justice is considered as an equal attitude toward all people, regardless of their status, issues, and personal relationships with the counselor (American Counseling Association, 2014). To elaborate on the conflict, there is an apparent confrontation between empathy for the client’s problems and potentially legal reasons not to fulfill her request. She might suffer from a decision that will not help her leave the country and start a new life, and on the other hand, there is a possibility that she cannot be given a diagnosis that will allow her to have paid leave.
Before going further, the FMLA requirements should be addressed to understand if the client clinically complies with the requirements for the act to be filed. After carefully going through them, it seems the only one that the client can theoretically comply with is related to the inability of an employee to work due to serious health conditions. The client suffers from anxiety, yet it is not clear if the severity of her condition makes her unable to work. Moreover, her request is not specifically linked to her condition; she asks for help with the issues that she is facing in her life. Therefore, the clinical requirements cannot be considered fulfilled.
The conclusion to be made of the above is that the conflict is resolved, and the counselor has to be equitable and decline the client’s request. Yet, there are other ways to solve the problem that must be sought by the counselor. Even if the FMLA cannot be filed, there are still issues that cause distress to the client, and it is the counselor’s duty to take care of them.
The next step to address is brainstorming courses of action and choosing the one that will be held on to. Considering that counseling is the only thing that can be offered when the FMLA cannot be filed, it is necessary to concentrate the brainstorming on what kind of issues should be addressed. The first idea that comes to mind is counseling the client and providing general psychological assistance in overcoming issues in her life. In fact, she seems to not be guilty of things that happened during the trip, and she must try to prove her point to her management, who have decided that she will not be conducting trips anymore.
Another issue to be addressed is the divorce she is going through, and there are various ways to support her in this through counseling. Her struggles in keeping sobriety are related to the overall stress she is experiencing; therefore, ways to minimize that stress should be looked for. It can be implemented with the help of a physician who prescribed the antianxiety drugs to the client and with counseling and looking for psychological methods to reduce anxiety. The physician can adjust the dose or prescript a different drug that would be more efficient for the treatment. Regarding counseling, there are many techniques developed by psychologists to reduce stress which includes psychotherapy and coping strategies that can be used on an everyday basis. If psychotherapy is required, the client can be advised to start visiting a psychotherapist to get additional help that cannot be provided by a counselor.
In evaluating the course of action chosen, aspects of justice, publicity, and universality should be addressed. The decision made seems to be justified and fair; the actions made would probably not be judged as negative by most people and other specialists. The same would be advised by a different counselor; therefore, the decision is universal (Forester-Miller & Davis, 2016). As there are no issues occurring after the evaluation, there is only one thing left for the counselor. It is to implement the course of action and do their best to provide the client’s help in such a difficult situation. In conclusion, the case has been analyzed with the help of the guides by Forester-Miller and Davids and APA, and it resulted in making a decision to decline the request of the client to file FMLA, yet providing psychological assistance in overcoming her situation.
References
American Counseling Association. (2014). ACA code of ethics.
Forester-Miller, H., & Davis, T. E. (2016). Practitioner’s guide to ethical decision making (Rev.ed.). Web.