Introduction
The ability to assist someone to understand himself or herself and his or her capacities besides developing his or her potentialities to solve the problems at hand and achieve social and psychological compatibility depends on a number of factors. The counselor needs to have better communication skills, knowledge and experience, passion, adequate resources, among others. Everyone needs guidance and counseling, which is vital in helping one solve the everyday problems.
Lack of guidance and counseling when one is going through difficulties eventually makes one become sick and even is some circumstances makes one commit suicide as a better way to deal with the difficulties at hand, which is not the correct way to deal with challenges. This is demonstrated in the movie, “Prayers for Bobby.” What Bobby Griffith, his mother, and community lacked was guidance and counseling. Being young and gay, he was supposed to have various counselors to guide him and if this were the case, he would not have committed suicide. The teacher, school, and community would possibly have intervened and prevented the family.
The teacher could have intervened by offering preventive counseling where he or she would have tried to make Bobby understand his situation and show him he was not doing anything wrong, since it was not his fault. In addition, the teachers could have advised Bobby’s family and especially his mother to accept him (Bobby) as his son, as nothing was wrong with him in the eyes of God.
The school on its part should have provided social, ethical, and preventive counseling to the family as a method of intervention and prevention. In terms of social and ethical counseling, the school should have offered a suitable environment to Bobby that would have enabled him acquire the skills that would have helped him interact with others in the school and home. In addition, the school should have counseled and guided him to adapt his situation. In terms of preventive counseling, the school could have advised him on how to deal with the stress resulting from his situation.
Community’s homophobia made Bobby commit suicide. The community should have formulated better mechanisms for prevention of gay rights. By this, the community would have accepted the gays and protected their rights and this could have prevented Bobby from committing suicide.
