General rules for managing counselor’s approach to clients (incarcerated women) must be based on five principles: confidentiality, justice, autonomy, nonmaleficence, and beneficence. With regard to the principle of confidentiality, the aspiring counselor (or the present counselors) should in any way protect the best interests of the clients; private conversations must be screened; necessary information like those that describes the mental and physical status of the patients must be reported to the proper authorities. Nonetheless those that proscribe the patient’s personal feelings and values must be kept in the group.
Here then are the rules that each counselor should follow during a typical therapy session: 1) ask the patient whether he/she would like to undergo a therapy session (bear in mind that a refusal means that the patient is not in the right mood to undertake a session), 2) relate with the patient by sharing some experiences that do not directly encroach on the patient’s problems, 3) get the general reaction of the patient (this will help you determine whether the patient would like to extend the conversation),
4) ask then the patient of some of his experiences with regards to the issue we are discussing now, 5) if the patient agrees to your suggestion, then ask him/her whether he/she would like other people to know his/her condition (remember that if the patient, in the middle of the therapy session exhibits some form of denial, then show some signs of sympathy – this will enable you to ask further of his/her condition), 6) do not by any means offer any solution to the patient’s condition without the assessment of the group,
7) questions that should be asked by the counselor must be motivational, that is, the patient would be willing to answer succeeding questions (Miller, 2003), 8) the therapy session must be made in an open area if the patient chooses it to be or in a close area in order for the patient to fully disclose his/her condition, and 9) encourage the patient after the therapy session to mingle with other people (based on the question: what types of people would you like to get along with? ). Do this type of therapy at least twice a week.
References Miller, William R. 2003. Motivational Enhancement Therapy: Description of Counseling Approach. URL http://www. drugabuse. gov/ADAC/ADAC9. html. Retrieved September 8, 2007.