Topic 7 DQ1: Discuss some areas on which you hold biases (divorce, domestic violence, death penalty). Biases can be personal or professional in nature. Confronting biases can help to overcome them. What are your personal/professional biases? What harm can result from not being aware of them? What standards are violated if they are not acknowledged and addressed?

Sure, there are plenty of ideas among the multitude, that everyone has a special secret bias that only comes out
as a reaction to our emotional views. My only thought is, I’m still not convinced that I have a preconceived
notion about things that I can’t understand and quickly formulate and action or an opinion over. This is hard for
me because, I’m not sure if I can give an honest opinion that measures my own ignorance or if I can be arrogant
enough to say, “I have not a bias view that include or conclude to the opinions of my peers”. I say this for many
reasons that challenge the “norm” of our collective attitudes about stuff that we were condition to believe. A lot
of my previous biases that included other human beings were corrected at an earlier stage in life and wasn’t
develop by the environment that I share. I tend to see it for whatever it is and leave it like it is. James Brown
said it best, “What it is, is what it is”. Take for instant, I was involved in a crisis with a 16 year old male a few
days back in the hospital who decided that his life should end because his mother sent him to stay with a
relative. This also was because the new step father didn’t approve of his behavior and his previous actions with
his friends. In my past experiences, I would have viewed this individual to the same category of other young
men without critically thinking about all of the particulars that were involved in his behavior. However, I felt
strange to believe that this young man was typical in his way of coping with his family structure that caused him
to be placed in the hospital. My bias was instant from the moment I read the report and soon walked into his
room. First thing I thought was; another introvert kid who had the dark appearance of gothic and smells heavily
like Cannabis, mixed with the entire government should collapse for whatever reason. I was totally wrong for all
my instant thoughts after talking with this young man for over 10 minutes and getting the real reason to why he
was admitted to the hospital in the first place. I say this with a blink and a giggle that being bias is hard for me.

Some bias attitudes have been expressed by psychologists working with all types of clients in crisis.
These preconceived attitudes may hinder psychologists from working more effectively in psychotherapy.
Counselor biases' can intervene in their ability to diagnose and plan interventions appropriately. According to
Walker and Spengler,1995, psychologists may overlook indicated treatment interventions for their client with
AIDS. They found when assessing a client who had AIDS and endogenous depression, psychologists may
mistakenly overlook appropriate pharmacological interventions. AIDS is such a significant issue for clients that
therapists react with their own stereotypes, (e.g., depression is an understandable reaction to AIDS), and in so
doing disregard indicated treatment options. The standards that can be violated in psychologist’s biases are:
2.06 Personal Problems and Conflicts, 3.01 Unfair Discrimination, 3.06 Conflict of Interest (Fisher, 2013).

Fisher, C. B. (2013). Decoding the Ethics Code: A Practical Guide for Psychologists (3rd ed.). Thousand
Oaks,CA: Sage Publications Inc.