ABSTRACT
A mental health counselor’s primary responsibility is to promote the client’s welfare. This obligation involves a comprehensive duty to observe the client’s mental health status. This practice is described as risk management. Risk management is a clinical excellence assurance process to identify, assess, and prioritize the client’s mental health risks such as bullying, sexual assault, family disharmony, substance abuse, and so forth. This chapter will cover the risk management considerations when treating clients on a day-to-day basis. Proper risk assessment allows clinicians to effectively provide care to clients and mitigate clinical practice risks by avoiding malpractice, liability, and disciplinary actions. This chapter will also discuss risk identification strategies and counseling resources to assist in preventative measures to minimize and monitor the influence of the unfortunate events that lead to these risks. Further, ethical and cultural considerations will be discussed in this chapter to accurately execute risk management. The effects of exposure to adversity can place individuals in a vulnerable emotional state. The conceptualization of one’s life events can influence one’s vulnerability and resiliency level. Therefore, it is fundamental for clinicians to help the client cultivate resiliency. Various strategies and interventions used by clinicians to foster ways to help the victims identify their own signs of strengths (resiliency) through their mental and cognitive ability will also be covered. As clinicians continue to engage in mental health risk management, the propensity to vicariously experience imminent emotional distress exists. Accordingly, mental health professionals need to learn techniques to develop the skills of intentional self-care.
