Obstacles and Challenges in Counselling Gays and Lesbians in Malaysia

Counselling service is regarded as a fundamental service essential for the human beings to achieve their goals. As professionals, counsellors may face difficulties in addressing professional issues and ethical dilemmas in their professional practice to handle sexuality cases. This study is conducted to achieve the main objective of addressing counsellor’s obstacles and challenges in counselling gay and lesbian clients in Malaysia. In order to obtain the information, this study used in-depth interview method through a purposive sampling technique. The study involved eight study participants consisting registered counsellors that have conducted counselling sessions with gay and lesbian clients. The data were analysed by studying the transcription of recording interview and identifying the themes emerged based on the objective of the study. The findings demonstrated five emerging themes pertaining to the obstacles and challenges of counsellors in counselling gay and lesbian clients: (i) expertise limitation (ii) transparency issue, (iii) client’s referred issues, (iv) counsellor’s value and (v) the absence of reference model. The results of this study are expected to provide knowledge and understanding to all parties on gay and lesbian issues in Malaysia, thus helping counsellors to understand, be more prepared and improve counselling services in a better and competent way. In conclusion, such studies were further elaborated in detail on the specific way of handling and guiding gay and lesbian counselling to be a source of reference to other counsellors.