Counselling for Depression: a response to counselling education in the twenty-first century. Ethical conflicts for a counselling approach operating within a medicalised bureaucratic health service

In this article, we consider the ethical issues arising from training counsellors in ‘Counselling for Depression’ in the UK. We describe Counselling for Depression (CfD), a competency-based approach to counselling accredited by the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) agenda in the National Health Service in the UK. We question whether creating a career path for counsellors in the NHS within IAPT compromises the values of the CfD approach and whether the person-centred and experiential approach and the counsellors providing it are able to survive intact. We consider the inherent conflicts within the value bases of CfD and IAPT and discuss how we address these conflicts within the training for CfD. We also describe the ongoing ethical conflicts we live with and what supports us to continue to engage in these conflicts.