Sex Addiction Counseling

Sex addiction is a behavioral addiction that could be hard for a clinician to diagnose because of lack of tools and instruments needed. Also, it could it could be tough to identify them to identify the frequency and quantity of sexual activity that has or is taking place (Benbir, Poyraz, & Apaydin, 2014). It is hard to find this information because the therapist has difficulty getting addiction-related features and seeing that there is currently only one screening test to test someone with a sexual addiction, this makes it even more challenging. The sexual addiction screening test helps provides hints to the clinician that a symptom of sexual addiction is present (Benbir, Poyraz, & Apaydin, 2014). Since it may be hard to identify a sexual addiction,

All counselor’s no matter what kind of addiction or behavior they are treating should follow the American Counseling Associations Code of Ethics (2014) which contains nine sections including, “the counseling relationship; confidentiality and privacy; professional responsibility; relationships with other professionals; evaluation, assessment, and interpretation; supervision, training, and teaching; research and publication; distance counseling, technology, and social media; and resolving ethical issues” (p. 3). This is a good guideline for an addiction counselor to follow. When counseling an individual with a sex addiction, the counselor has a legal and ethical responsibility to keep what is said in his or her counseling session to himself or herself. If a couple is coming in together, ethically the counselor cannot relay any information to either of the people if they come in a separate times. If the therapist is not trained well enough in certain behavioral areas this could be a cause for concern. For example, seeing as there is a lack of training for therapist in regards to cybersex addiction, potential ethical dilemmas could be involved (Jones & Tuttle, 2012). Also, the therapist must keep his or her opinions to themselves and should not place any type of religious beliefs on their clients. Duty to warn is an extremely important issue when it comes to both legal and ethical dilemmas for a counselor. If a client confesses to raping a child, watching child porn, or has committed any type of sexual out with a child or minor, then the therapist has the responsibility to assess whether or not the client is has been involved with a child sexually or has a potential to act out sexually with a child (Jones & Tuttle, 2012). Counseling those with a sex addiction requires the counselor to be aware of ethical considerations. They should always be up to date on the