The short answer? Yes, they do. The dual relationship in being both a co-worker and a service provider set up both the counselor and the officer for hardship, as well as possibly prevent needed mental health care. Here’s the long answer: I want to commend your department for hiring counselors to help youth and families who are involved in damaging psychological and legal patterns. There is much to gain by law enforcement and mental health services working closely. Even though the particular methods and immediate goals are different ... the ultimate goal is enhancing the safety and happiness of the community.

I further commend you for providing care for officers who undergo the most gut-wrenching and psychologically disturbing experiences a person can face. It is incredibly wise (not to mention compassionate) to create a system that strengthens the resiliency of police officers and first responders.
However, having counselors serve both as counselors to community members involved in your cases and as counselors to the staff working on those cases creates a troubling dual relationship. The relationship does not appear to be inherently abusive — the counselors are not necessarily abusing their privilege as counselors; they don’t appear to have secretly switched the agenda of their work; and they are not necessarily putting officers in a double bind situation.
But, the dual relationship does create a troubling situation. It’s very important that counselors remain objective in their work, and that everyone perceives them as objective. This objectivity is always compromised if a counselor already has a relationship with a new client. No counselor can be untainted by personal connections when trying to ascertain “how suicidal is this client/officer/co-worker?” or “are his arguments with his wife abusive or are they ‘understandable’?”
Officer trust and confidence and comfort may also be jeopardized by working alongside someone who has been his counselor. There is a dynamic called the “halo or horns effect.” When a “client” has had a good experience with a counselor, the client can sometimes see the counselor in an unrealistic “can do no wrong” view. This halo makes it hard to have legitimate differences of opinion and authority in the workplace. It is also true that a client’s experience with a counselor can feel awful (even if the counselor has not made any mistake). The officer/client could have a hard time cooperating with, referring someone to, or respecting the opinion of a counselor he has had a negative experience with.
Counseling arrangements create a power differential that undermines working as colleagues. Even in short-term, debriefing types of counseling, the client might reveal private information, becoming vulnerable. The counselor does not. The counselor might hold
negative opinions about officer fitness. So even without the “halo or horns” effect, the counselor has more power in the relationship. That makes it very hard for the officer to exercise his or her appropriate power in the workplace, particularly while having conflicts with the counselor over a case.
In summary, I think it’s important for officers to get high quality counseling without any workplace entanglements, real or perceived. What role can the counselors employed by your department play in supporting your staff? If you have a peer support program, those counselors could serve as the mentors or trainers of the support peers. They could serve as educational and skills development consultants. And, they could see that an appropriate employee assistance program (EAP) is established to offer employees short-term, focused, and professional services that are not entangled by dual coworker relationships.

Adam Robinson, MA, CSAPC ( This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ) is associate director of Program Services at Wake AHEC in Raleigh, NC, and former chair of the NC Substance Abuse Profes-sional Certification Board Ethics Committee.

This article is published in Counselor,The Magazine for Addiction Professionals, December 2005, v.6, n.6, pp.48.

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