Requirements:

1 Original post 300-400 words. 2 references. APA format.

2 Reply comments 100-150 words each.

Personal note: My concentration is in Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) and I plan to work with children and young adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). My own son is 9 years old and has non-vocal ASD, which means that he does not currently use vocal speech to communicate.

Consider issues that you may encounter in your future career that challenge your ability to maintain balance or adhere to professional boundaries. Review academic sources related to these topics, such as textbooks from past courses or journal articles and e-books from the Kaplan library. Some issues to consider are: stressors common to psychology professionals, dual relationships, work/life balance, and professional competence. You should also locate resources that discuss strategies for dealing with these challenges.

Discussion Questions:

1. What issues related to balancing multiple responsibilities (such as work/life balance) or maintaining professionalism might you encounter in your future career? What skills have you learned throughout your degree program that will help you prevent or address these issues? For example, what are some evidence-based coping methods you can employ? Are there any professional resources that can help you with these issues?

2. In what ways can preventing and identifying issues related to stress, boundaries, and multiple responsibilities help you maintain professionalism in your field?

Student 1's post (Faith) :

One think I think of when considering ethics in therapy is non-bias. Specifically, I think of the preference that a lot of people have been reported to have for a therapist with their same self-reported gender (BHATI, 2014). Some studies showed a loose correlation to client satisfaction and same-sex therapists. This study took a variety of combinations from female to female, male to female, female to male, and male to male client/therapists. They studied the therapeutic bond, collaborative role enactment, empathy, and affirmation (BHATI, 2014). In this study, all four areas of client satisfaction proved that there was no significant correlation between specific gender combinations and better outcomes.

I chose this study without knowing the results to see what it would say about the truth to same-sex therapy being more productive. As I thought it might, the results proved this to be incorrect. When I've gone to therapy, I've always preferred female therapists because I feel more comfortable with a female. According to the article I chose, this is the case in most situations, people are typically placed with a therapist of their same self-reported gender (BHATI, 2014). I feel that it will be hard not to prefer or show a bias toward female clients above male clients.

A lot of the classes I've taken have taught me about being nonbiased toward any type of people. One in particular though would be the other class I'm in right now: Working With Children in a Diverse World. The basis of the class is to teach us how to better understand and treat students of different cultures equally, but it does go briefly into things like gender, socioeconomic status, and family set up. I think this class has helped me to understand how to create a bond and better help children of all types including gender as well as culture, family income, and many other factors. The key to dealing with this is just to simply force yourself to treat every type of person equally. You need to address them in a way that will best help them according to their differences, but show no bias. Personally, addressing my issues with men would be helpful to keeping myself unbiased for females or against males. I have bad experiences with men, but I have a loving husband and I want to help all children not just girls, so that's something I would need to remind myself of daily.

References

BHATI, K. S. (2014). EFFECT OF CLIENT-THERAPIST GENDER MATCH ON THE THERAPEUTIC RELATIONSHIP: AN EXPLORATORY ANALYSIS. Psychological Reports, 115(2), 565-583. doi:10.2466/21.02.PR0.115c23z1

Student 2's post (Tiffany) :

This topic hits home for me, as it is something that I am already struggling with a little bit. I am going into ABA and one thing I did not realize was that a lot of therapy is done after school hours. THis is difficult to balance with home life as I have 3 active kids at home. Another huge issue for me is being sure that I do not cross boundaries, I tend to get emotionally vested in my clients therapy and then I tend to bring that home to my own family, meaning if something is working with a client, I try that same approach with my children who are also on the spectrum. While this may work sometimes, it is not something that I should be doing. And being emotionally vested in my clients is not healthy for the client or myself.

In order to balance my world, I have to create a routine or schedule so that I can give both portions of my life the same amount of time and effort. Building a schedule such as only working with afternoon clients on Mondays and Thursdays is helpful because it gives me time to go to my kids extracurricular. Also, taking the long way home between work and home gives me the extra time needed to decompress from work and not bring those things home to my kids. Lastly, I have to remember that it is okay to be emotionally vested in my clients success as long as I keep that professional balance. It is important to go back to the BACB website occasionally to refresh myself n the ethical guidelines and responsibilities to ensure that I am not crossing lines when working with the children that I serve.