Evan is a year-old trans man who still remembers the sting of betrayal from his secondary school counsellor, all those years ago. Yet another friend had a counsellor give him a stern speech about the supposed dangers of cross-dressing. These counsellors are touted as a respite for students in crisis. Most of the time, they get the job done, and students get the help and guidance they need.
They speak of counsellors breaching confidentiality , getting involved and making predicaments worse for their students, or otherwise leaving the student worse off for approaching them. The tripping block, it seems, is at the starting line. Secondary school counsellors are often the first experience most Singaporean kids have with therapy of any sort. But errant behaviour is scaring people from looking for help again well into adulthood.
To be clear, not all school counsellors are bad. The student may be doing poorly in school, acting out in class, or just having a bad go of things. Observing confidentiality of information is key for school counsellors to maintain trust with their students. It sounds about right. Somehow, some counsellors still run afoul of these standards. The respondents may not necessarily have dealt with malpractice, but they still walked away worse off. Evan had heard horror stories about people being outed to their parents.
So when he started seeing a school counsellor in Secondary 2 after having a mental breakdown, he made sure not to mention that he was questioning his sexuality and gender. In his sessions, he only discussed his poor relationship with his parents and how it was affecting his mental health.
He asked the school counsellor not to tell his parents that he was seeking counselling. Ironically, he was at the counsellor because of how his parents were treating him. Aside from the initial fear and anger of being outed, Evan was also confused. But she still told my parents everything. The session continued with the counsellor talking more so at Ashley than to her.
