The court ruling in the landmark case of Eisel v Board of Education of Montgomery County, 324 Md. 376 (1991) has a significant impact to the counseling profession. The main issue of the case is whether or not the duty of counselors to intervene to prevent the commission of a suicide extends to school counselors as a duty owed to prevent the suicide of Nicole Eisel, who is a 13-year old student of Montgomery County. The antecedent facts of the case involve the manifestation of Nicole’s tendency of committing suicide after she openly told her friends about her plan of killing herself. Nicole’s friends told the school counselors who later on questioned Nicole about her statement. Nicole denied the allegations of her friends and neither of the counselors notified the parents of Nicole. A week later, Nicole died after having found to have entered into a murder-suicide pact with another student from other school. The student first shot Nicole then shot her self afterwards.
The father of Nicole now sued the two counselors for negligence on their failure to prevent the commission of a suicide by Nicole and for non-compliance of the School Board policy requiring counselors to contact the parents of any student showing suicidal thoughts. The counselors as defendants on the charges filed by Nicole’s father contend that they owe no such duty to Nicole. The main issue to be resolved by the court now involves the question of whether or not there was a breach of duty by the junior high school counselors for the failure of informing the parents of Nicole of her suicidal thoughts. The court ruling provides that the counselors owe such duty because the prevention of youth suicide is an important public policy and the local educational institutions should be at the forefront of preventing it. Another doctrinal ruling of this landmark case is that when the risk of death of a child is balanced as against the burden to be imposed on the defendant counselors, the scales of justice will always be in favor of duty (Best and Barnes, 2007).
The school counseling profession has some legal and ethical implications, thus the American School Counselor Association (ASCA) aims to address the ethical and legal concerns arising from the exercise of the profession. It aims to help school counselors understand the best behavior while practicing their profession and teach them how to deal with difficult issues by providing the standard of practice and guidelines. It can be noted that one of the ethical standards imposed upon school counselors is confidentiality. This requires the non-disclosure of any information about their students to other parties. However, the ASCA also provides for an exception to this provision, that is, confidentiality does not apply in case when imminent harm is attendant to a particular situation. The provision under A.2.e. on confidentiality of the ASCA Ethical Standards For School Counselors in particular provides that the school counselors should keep information confidential provided that a breach is required in order to prevent some foreseeable and serious harm to minors in schools (American School Counselor Association, 2016).
The school counselors in the case failed to recognize the threat or risk present under the circumstances of the case. There is an apparent negligence on the part of the school counselors to observe the requirement of the ASCA ethical code to recognize the presence of danger involving the reported behavior of Nicole and failed to disclose the same or to communicate the apparent risk to her parents. This could have prevented the death of Nicole. In line with the privacy concerns regarding disclosing a student's record in school, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), parents are given certain rights involving access to their children's records in school (US Department of Education, 2015). While this pertains mainly on the privacy of student’s educational records, it may also be applied in terms of recognizing the rights of parents to have access to relevant records and information regarding their children.
The ruling of the court on Eisel v Board of Education of Montgomery County serves as a mandatory imposition among school counselors to observe the duty owed to students to intervene on matters concerning risky behaviors or the threat of suicide in order to prevent potential harm resulting from such behavior. The case has broken down the traditional concept with respect to the duty owed by the school counselors to their students, including the right to breach the confidentiality provision in case there is an imminent threat or harm to the student. The case suggests that school counselors should report any apparent or suspicious behaviors of students despite their concern of violating the confidential relationship between the counselor and the student (Henderson, 2007). Another ethical implication of the case to the school counseling profession is that it gives counselors the leg muscle to advocate towards prevention of harm and risks to students.
The case also provides the legal implication of giving school counselors the legal authority to exercise autonomy in terms of decision making process involving student welfare. Students are viewed as minors and it has become a public policy that their protection and safety is a matter of community concern and school counselors are in the position to afford protection to minors who are within the custody of schools that are considered to be the student’s second home. In other related cases involving ethical practices among school counselors, school counselors are required to show loyalty to minors and such also extends to the minor's parents (Stone and Dahir, 2016). It can be assumed therefore that the case ruling’s ethical and legal implication to the school counseling profession extends to involve the authority of taking initiatives to identify potential harms to students and that the counselors owe the duty to the parents to be informed of such risks and they can work together in planning the strategic approach to help the student to become safe against any apparent peril.
The landmark case has a major regional and statewide impact on laws and statues. It even has a significant effect on the need for a systemic change in organizational policies and procedures among educational institutions. Law and statutes may now be construed as one tipping the scales in favor of the duty owed by school counselors to prevent suicide even within the school setting. The case will also encourage school supervisors and school counselors to review their internal rules, policies and procedures to drive change from the old notion of limited accountability imposed among school counselors. While ethics and laws are not the same, both are related. The case provides significant connection between how the failure to uphold and observe ethical standards can hold school counselors lawfully accountable to the negative consequences that may happen to minor students.
Laws or statues may also be associated to the complex ethical dilemmas involving institutional policies that affect school counselor's decisions. The case of Eisel v. Board of Education of Montgomery County clearly demonstrates the weight that institutional policies may carry pertaining to making legal decisions. Counselors are now subjected by law to the burden of duty to prevent a student's suicidal intent. They are required to exercise reasonable means of informing the school administrators and the concerned student's parents upon any finding of the risk of a suicidal intent from a student. Legally speaking, the case decision imposes upon school counselors to become subject to malpractice lawsuits in case their action or decisions constitute a consequential loss of life for failure to exercise the ethical standards appropriate under certain circumstances (Herlihy and Corey, 2015).
References:
American School Counselor Association (2016). ASCA Ethical Standards for School Counselors. Alexandria, VA: American School Counselor Association.
Best, A. and Barnes, D.W. (2007). Basic Tort Law: Cases, Statutes, and Problems. New York: Aspen Publishers.
Henderson, D. A. (2007). School counseling. In R. Cottone & V. Tarvydas. Counseling ethics and decision making. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Herlihy, B. and Corey, G. (2015). ACA Ethical Standards Casebook. Alexandria, VA: American Counseling Association.
Stone, C. and Dahir, C.A. (2016). The Transformed School Counselor. Boston: Cengage Learning.
US Department of Education (2015). Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). Retrieved from http://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index.html.
