PSY360: Abnormal Psychology-3rd week

Ethical principles guide for mental health

professionals Dr. Sumaira Khurshid Tahira

Associate Prof

NNU, China

6/19/2021

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What Ethical Principles Guide Mental Health Professionals?

◦ Most clinicians care greatly about their clients and strive to help them while at the same time respecting their rights and dignity (Pope & Vasquez, 2011).

◦ In fact, clinicians do not rely exclusively on the legislative and court systems to ensure proper and effective clinical practice.

◦ They also regulate themselves by continually developing and revising ethical guidelines for their work and behavior.

◦ Many legal decisions do nothing more than place the power of the law behind these already existing professional guidelines.

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Code of ethics

◦ A body of principles and rules for ethical behavior, designed to

guide decisions and actions by members

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Ethical Principles for Mental Health Professionals?

◦ Each profession within the mental health field has its own code of

ethics.

◦ The code of the American Psychological Association (2014, 2010, 2002)

is typical.

◦ Highly respected code by other mental health professionals and public

officials, includes specific guidelines:

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Principles Guide for Mental Health Professionals

1. Psychologists are permitted to offer advice

◦ in self-help books, on DVDs, on television and radio programs, in

newspaper and magazines, through mailed material, and in other

places, provided they do so responsibly and professionally.

◦ base their advice on appropriate psychological literature and

practices.

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Principles Guide for Mental Health Professionals

◦ Psychologists are bound by these same ethical requirements when

they offer advice and ideas online, whether on individual Web

pages, blogs, bulletin boards, or chat rooms.

◦ Internet-based professional advice has proved difficult to regulate,

however, because the number of such offerings keeps getting larger

and larger and so many advice-givers do not appear to have any

professional training or credentials.

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Principles Guide for Mental Health Professionals

2. Psychologists may not conduct fraudulent research, plagiarize the

work of others, or publish false data.

◦ During the past 30 years cases of scientific fraud or misconduct have been

discovered in all of the sciences, including psychology.

◦ These acts have led to misunderstandings of important issues, taken

scientific research in the wrong direction, and damaged public trust.

◦ Unfortunately, the impressions created by false findings may continue to

influence the thinking of both the public and other scientists for years.

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Principles Guide for Mental Health Professionals

3. Psychologists must acknowledge their limitations

◦ With regard to patients who are disabled or whose gender, ethnicity,

language, socioeconomic status, or sexual orientation differs from that of

the therapist.

◦ This guideline often requires psychotherapists to obtain additional

training or supervision, consult with more knowledgeable colleagues, or

refer clients to more appropriate professionals.

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Principles Guide for Mental Health Professionals

◦ 4. Psychologists who make evaluations and testify in legal cases

must base their assessments on sufficient information and

substantiate their findings appropriately.

◦ If an adequate examination of the individual in question is not possible,

psychologists must make clear the limited nature of their testimony.

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Principles Guide for Mental Health Professionals

5. Psychologists may not take advantage of clients and students, sexually

or otherwise.

◦ This guideline relates to the widespread social problem of sexual

harassment, as well as the problem of therapists who take sexual advantage

of clients in therapy.

◦ The code specifically forbids a sexual relationship with a present or former

therapy client for at least two years after the end of treatment— and even

then such a relationship is permitted only in “the most unusual

circumstances.” 6/19/2021 10

Principles Guide for Mental Health Professionals

◦ Furthermore, psychologists may not accept as clients people with

whom they have previously had a sexual relationship.

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Principles Guide for Mental Health Professionals

◦ Research has clarified that clients may suffer great emotional damage

from sexual involvement with their therapists (Pope & Wedding,

2014; Pope & Vasquez, 2011).

◦ On the basis of various surveys, reviewers have estimated that 4 to 5

percent of today’s therapists engage in some form of sexual

misconduct with patients, down from 10 percent more than a

◦ decade ago.

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Principles Guide for Mental Health Professionals

◦ The vast majority of therapists do not engage in sexual behavior of any kind with clients, their ability to control private feelings is apparently another matter.

◦ In surveys, more than 80 percent of therapists reported having been sexually attracted to a client, at least on occasion (Pope & Wedding, 2014; Pope & Vasquez, 2011; Pope et al., 2006).

◦ Although few of these therapists acted on their feelings, most of them felt guilty, anxious, or concerned about the attraction.

◦ Given such issues, it is not surprising that sexual ethics training is given high priority in many of today’s clinical training programs.

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Principles Guide for Mental Health Professionals

6. Psychologists must adhere to the principle of confidentiality.

◦ All of the state and federal courts have upheld laws protecting therapist

confidentiality (Fisher, 2013; Nagy, 2011; Pope & Vasquez, 2011).

◦ For peace of mind and to ensure effective therapy, clients must be able to

trust that their private exchanges with a therapist will not be repeated to

others.

◦ There are times, however, when the principle of confidentiality must be

compromised.

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Principles Guide for Mental Health Professionals

◦ A therapist in training, for example, must discuss cases on a regular

basis with a supervisor, and clients must be informed that such

discussions are taking place.

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Principles Guide for Mental Health Professionals

◦ A second exception arises in cases of outpatients who are clearly

dangerous.

◦ The 1976 case of Tarasoff , University of California, one of the most

important cases to affect client–therapist relationships, concerned an

outpatient at a University of California hospital. He had confided to his

therapist that he wanted to harm his former girlfriend, Tanya Tarasoff.

◦ Several days after ending therapy, the former patient fulfilled his promise.

He stabbed Tanya Tarasoff to death.

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Principles Guide for Mental Health Professional

◦ Should confidentiality have been broken in this case? The therapist, in

fact, felt that it should. Campus police were notified, but the patient was

released after some questioning.

◦ In their suit against the hospital and therapist, the victim’s parents

argued that the therapist should have also warned them and their

daughter that the patient intended to harm Ms. Tarasoff. The California

Supreme Court agreed: “The protective privilege ends where the public

peril begins.”

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Principles Guide for Mental Health Professional

◦ The current code of ethics for psychologists thus declares that

therapists have a duty to protect—a responsibility to break

confidentiality, even without the client’s consent, when it is

necessary “to protect the client or others from harm.” Since the

Tarasoff ruling, California’s courts further have held that therapists

must also protect people who are close to a client’s intended victim

and thus in danger.

◦ A child, for example, is likely to be at risk when a client plans to

assault the child’s mother. 6/19/2021 18

Principles Guide for Mental Health Professional

◦ In addition, the California courts have ruled that therapists must act to

protect people even when information about the dangerousness of a

client is received from the client’s family, rather than from the client.

◦ Many, but not all, states have adopted the California court rulings or

similar ones, and a number have passed “duty to protect” bills that

clarify the rules of confidentiality for therapists and protect them from

certain civil suits (Weinstock et al., 2014; Sonne, 2012).

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