Course content © Copyright 2018 - 2025 by Frederic G. Reamer, Ph.D.. All rights reserved.

Course Outline

Section One: Introduction
Learning Objectives
Case Illustrations
The Development of Values and Ethics in the Mental Health Professions
     The Ethical Theory and Decision-Making Period
     The Ethical and Risk Management Period
     The Digital Period
 

Section Two: The Practical Implications of Professional and Personal Values
Reconciling Personal and Professional Values
     Cultural and Religious Values
 

Section Three: Ethical Standards in the Mental Health Professionals
Codes of Ethics
     Ethical Responsibilities to Clients
     Ethical Responsibilities to Colleagues
     Ethical Responsibilities in Practice Settings
     Ethical Responsibilities as Professionals
     Ethical Responsibilities to the Professions
     Ethical Responsibilities to Society at Large
 

Section Four: Ethical Decision-Making: A Practical Strategy
A Brief Overview of Ethical Theory
 

Section Five: Ethics, Risk Management and Ethical Misconduct
The Adjudication of Mental Health Professionals
     Confidentiality and Privacy
     Delivery of Services and Boundary Violations
     Supervision of Staff
     Consultation, Referral and Records
     Deception and Fraud
     Termination of Services
     The Impaired Mental Health Practitioner
Conducting an Ethics Audit

Section One

Introduction

I would like to welcome you to this unique opportunity to use distance learning to explore a wide range of challenging ethical issues in the mental health professions. There is no question that interest in ethical issues in psychology, counseling, social work, psychiatry, marriage and family therapy, psychiatric nursing, and pastoral counseling – and, more generally, professional ethics – has burgeoned in recent years. 

I recognize that mental health professionals enroll in ethics continuing education courses for diverse reasons and with different levels of enthusiasm.  Some practitioners are keenly interested in the subject because of their direct experience with difficult ethical challenges or because of their general fascination with moral dilemmas.  Other mental health professionals enroll in ethics continuing education classes with some misgivings or reluctance – sometimes fearing that the material will be dry and mundane – and primarily because their state licensing board mandates ethics education.

Whatever your reasons for enrolling in this ethics course, and whatever your level of enthusiasm, my goal is to present you with engaging material that you find useful.  My hope is that by the end of this experience you have a keener appreciation of the complexity of ethical issues encountered by mental health professionals, greater understanding of both the daunting and more routine ethical issues that arise in the field, a solid grasp of helpful resources, and concrete information to help you protect clients and yourselves. Portions of this course content draw on the author’s work found in the following:

Frederic G. Reamer. (2018). Ethical Standards in Social Work, 3rd Edition. Washington, DC: NASW Press.

Frederic G. Reamer. (2018). Social Work Values and Ethics, 5^th Edition. New York: Columbia University Press.

Frederic G. Reamer. (2017). On the Parole Board: Reflections on Crime, Punishment, Redemption, and Justice. New York: Columbia University Press.

Frederic G. Reamer. (2015). Risk Management in Social Work: Preventing Professional Malpractice, Liability and Disciplinary Action. New York: Columbia University Press.

Frederic G. Reamer. (2012). Boundary Issues and Dual Relationships in the Human Services. New York: Columbia University Press.

Frederic G. Reamer. (2009). Social Work Ethics Casebook: Cases and Commentary. Washington, DC: NASW Press.

Frederic G. Reamer. (2006). Ethical Standards in Social Work: A Review of the NASW Code of Ethics, 2^nd ed. Washington, DC: NASW Press.

Frederic G. Reamer. (2001). The Social Work Ethics Audit: A Risk-management Tool. Washington, DC: NASW Press.

Learning Objectives

Case Illustrations

Throughout this course I will introduce case-based examples of ethical issues and dilemmas.  I will use these cases to illustrate key concepts related to ethical standards and ethical decision-making.  Here are several examples of the kinds of ethics-related circumstances we’ll be addressing:

Experienced mental health professionals can certainly identify with these wide-ranging ethical challenges.  These circumstances certainly demand sophisticated clinical skills to help clients and others.  But, these situations also raise complex issues involving values and ethics. In fact, the values and ethical challenges in these case scenarios include four core issues in the mental health professions that we will address in this continuing education course:

1.           The value base of the mental health professions

2.           Ethical dilemmas in the mental health professions

3.           Ethical decision making  

4.           Ethics risk management

Each of these cases raises difficult decisions about core professional values.  As I shall explore more fully, the various mental health professions are rooted in a fundamental set of values that ultimately shape the professions’ missions and their practitioners’ priorities and judgments. As the mental health professional in these examples, you would be concerned about several key values, including the importance of privacy, confidentiality, respect, client self-determination, integrity, professional service, clear professional and personal boundaries, and so on.

Ideally, of course, the practitioners in these cases would act in accord with all these values simultaneously. What counselor or therapist would not want to respect clients’ right to self-determination and privacy, protect clients and third parties from harm, obey the law, provide services with integrity, maintain clear boundaries, and so forth?  The problem, however, is that situations sometimes arise in counseling and psychotherapy in which core values in the professions conflict, and this leads to ethical dilemmas. An ethical dilemma is a situation in which professional duties and obligations, rooted in core values, clash. This is when practitioners must decide which values – as expressed in various duties and obligations – take precedence.

In order to make these difficult judgments counselors and psychotherapists need to be familiar with contemporary thinking about ethical decision making.   

• How does one balance one’s commitment to a client’s right to privacy when releasing sensitive information might protect a third party from harm? 
• How does one reconcile conflict between a self-destructive client’s right to self-determination and the practitioner’s duty to protect the client from injury? 
• How does a practitioner provide critically important emotional support to a client without violating professional boundaries?

The phenomenon of ethical decision making in mental health has matured considerably in recent years.  Practitioners trained today have far more access to helpful literature and concepts related to ethical decision making than did their predecessors.

Finally, practitioners must be concerned about the risk-management consequences of their ethical decisions and actions, particularly the possibility of professional malprac­tice and misconduct. 

• Is it acceptable for a mental health practitioner knowingly and willingly to violate a widely held ethical standard, whatever the motive?
• What consequences should there be for a practitioner who does not act in a client’s best interests?
• What legal risks -- in the form of criminal penalties, ethics complaints, formal adjudication by ethics disciplinary committees or state licensing boards, and lawsuits -- do counselors and psychotherapists face as a result of their actions?

The Development of Values and Ethics

in the Mental Health Professions

It is important to understand the historical evolution of thinking in the mental health professions’ value bases, ethical dilemmas in practice, ethical decision-making, and practitioner malpractice and misconduct.  Certainly, the general topics of values and ethics have been key to the professions since their formal inception. Historical accounts of the professions’ development routinely focus on the compelling importance of the mental health professions’ value base and ethical principles. Without question, over the years beliefs about the various professions’ values and ethics have shaped the professions’ foundations and missions.

Although the theme of values and ethics has been central in the mental health professions since their beginning, practitioners’ conceptions of what these terms mean and of their influence on practice have changed over time. The evolution of values and ethics in the mental health professions has had several key stages: the morality period, the values period, the ethical theory and decision-making period, and the ethical standards and risk management period.  Briefly, the morality period began in the late nineteenth century.  During this period many members of helping professions were much more concerned about the morality of the client than about the morality or ethics of the profession or its practitioners. This preoccupation often took the form of paternalistic attempts to strengthen the morality or rectitude of the poor whose “wayward” lives had created all kinds of personal and interpersonal problems.

During the next several decades, mental health professionals focused on establishing and polishing their intervention strategies and techniques, training programs, and conceptual frameworks.  Especially during the turbulent 1960s and 1970s, many mental health professionals spent considerable time examining and clarifying the relationship between their own personal values and professional values.  During the so-called “values clarification” movement, many practitioners developed a rich understanding of the relationship between their personal views and their professional practice, especially when it came to controversial and divisive issues such as poverty, abortion, homosexuality, alcohol and drug use, and race relations.

At various points in the mid-twentieth century, some of the mental health and helping professions began to develop formal ethical guidelines to enhance proper conduct among practitioners. In social work, for example, in 1947 the Delegate Conference of the American Association of Social Workers, predecessor to the National Association of Social Workers, adopted a code of ethics.  The National Association of Social Workers, formed in 1955, ratified its first formal code of ethics in 1960.

In 1947, the American Psychological Association’s Committee on Scientific and Professional Ethics recommended that the APA (formed a half century earlier, in 1892) develop a formal code of ethics.  The APA collected examples of ethical dilemmas encountered by APA members, which led to a draft code that was refined and approved in 1952.   A 1959 revision was adopted for use on a trial basis.  During the same general period, the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT), formed in 1942, adopted its first formal ethics code in 1962. 

The Ethical Theory and DECISION-MAKING Period

During the late 1970s a number of mental health professionals and scholars became interested in the newly emerging, broader subject of applied and professional ethics (also known now as practical ethics).  What occurred in professions such as psychology, counseling, social work, psychiatry, marital and family counseling, and pastoral counseling reflected what occurred in many other professions as well.  Professions as diverse as nursing, medicine, engineering, law, business, journalism, psychology, counseling, social work, and criminal justice began to pay significant attention to the subject. Large numbers of undergraduate and graduate education programs added courses on applied and professional ethics to their curricula, professional conferences witnessed a substantial increase in pre­sentations on the subject, and the number of publications on professional ethics increased.

The rapid growth of professional ethics "think tanks" in the U.S. during this period -- beginning especially with the Hastings Center in New York and the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University -- is a major indicator of the significant growth of interest in applied, professional, and practical ethics.  Today, in fact, the number of such ethics centers is so large that there is a national association, the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics.  The field has also produced prominent and influential encyclopedias: the Encyclopedia of Bioethics and Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics.

The growth of interest in professional ethics during this period was due to a variety of factors, many of which affected the development of ethical inquiry, scholarship, and education in the mental health professions. Controversial technological developments in health care and other fields certainly triggered considerable ethical debate involving such issues as organ transplantation, genetic engineering, psychopharmacological intervention, termination of life support, reproductive rights, and test-tube babies.

Prominent, visible publicity about scandals in government also led to widespread interest in professional ethics. Beginning especially with Watergate in the early 1970s, the public has become painfully aware of various profes­sionals who have abused their clients and patients, emotionally, physically, or financially. The media (television, newspapers, radio, and the Internet) have been filled with disturbing reports of physicians, psychologists, lawyers, clergy, social workers, nurses, pharmacists, police, accountants and other professionals who have exploited the people they are supposed to help. Consequently, nearly all professions now take more seriously their responsibility to educate practitioners about potential abuse and ways to prevent it.

Also, the introduction, beginning especially in the 1960s, of such terminology as patients’ rights, welfare rights, women’s rights, and prisoners’ rights helped shape professionals’ thinking about the importance of ethical concepts. Since the 1960s, members of many professions have been much more aware of the concept of rights, and this has led many training programs to broach questions about the nature of professionals’ ethical duties to their clients and patients.

Today’s professionals also have a much better appreciation of the limits of science and its ability to respond to the many complex moral questions professionals encounter. Although for some time, particularly since the 1930s, science has been viewed as the key to many of life’s complex questions and puzzles, contemporary professionals understand that science cannot answer a number of important questions that are, fundamentally, ethical in nature.

Finally, the well-documented increase in malpractice claims and ethics complaints (typically filed with state licensing boards and professional organizations in psychology, counseling, marriage and family therapy, nursing, psychiatry, and social work), along with publicity about unethical professionals, has forced the professions to take a closer look at their ethical standards, training, and prevention protocols. All professions have experienced an increase in legal complaints against practitioners, and a substantial portion of these complaints allege some form of unethical conduct. As a result of this troubling trend, the various mental health professions have strengthened their focus on ethics education.

The emergence of the broad applied, professional, and practical ethics fields clearly influenced the development of ethics education and ethical standards in the mental health professions.  Beginning especially in the early 1980s, a number of educators began writing about ethical issues and dilemmas, drawing in part on literature, concepts, and theories from moral philosophy in general and the newer field of applied and professional ethics.  One key result was the emergence in the 1980s of a critical mass of literature on ethical issues in the mental health professions. For the first time in the professions’ history, several books and many journal articles explored the intricate and complex relationship between ethical dilemmas in the mental health professions and ethical decision-making.  Unlike the professions’ earlier liter­ature, publications on ethics in the 1980s explored the relevance of moral philosophy and ethical theory to ethical dilemmas faced by practitioners. Clearly, this important phase has dramatically changed professionals’ understanding of and approach to ethical issues.

The Ethical Standards and Risk Management Period

The most recent (and current) stage in the development of ethics in the mental health professions is a direct consequence of these earlier stages.  During this stage the various mental health professions have greatly expanded ethical standards to guide practitioners' conduct and taken steps to enhance their understanding of professional negligence and liability.  As I will discuss in more detail soon, this includes the development of a comprehensive code of ethics for the professions and development of a significant body of literature focusing on ethics-related malpractice and liability risks, and risk management strategies designed to protect clients and prevent ethics complaints and ethics-related lawsuits. 

As a result of increased litigation and ethics complaints against mental health practitioners -- a significant portion of which alleges some kind of ethics violation -- many professional education programs, social service agencies, licensing boards, and professional associations are sponsoring special training and education on ethics-related risk management, especially related to such issues as confidential and privileged information, informed consent, conflicts of interest, dual relationships and boundary issues, termination of services, and documentation.  This training and education typically focus on common ethical mistakes, procedures for handling complex ethical issues and dilemmas, forms of ethical misconduct, and prevailing ethical standards.  This continuing education course sponsored by BehavioralHealthCE is a good example.

Practitioners in the U.S. are particularly concerned about ethical issues and related liability risks that result from managed care.  Managed care, which began in the U.S. in the 1980s, includes ambitious attempts by the insurance industry and service providers to deliver mental health and social services in the most cost-effective and efficient way possible.  One major feature of managed care is that practitioners must obtain approval from managed care organizations before providing services to clients.  This process typically requires practitioners to disclose confidential clinical and personal information about clients.  Clinicians must be familiar with potential confidentiality risks associated with the disclosure of information to managed care organizations.

In addition, clinicians sometimes are unable to obtain authorization for services that they think are essential for vulnerable or troubled clients.  In some instances, clinicians may be tempted to exaggerate clients' clinical symptoms, a form of fraud and deception, in an effort to obtain approval for services from managed care organizations.  Clinicians sometimes find themselves on the horns of an ethical dilemma, caught between their obligation to serve clients, their duty to be truthful in their dealings with managed care organizations, and their right to be paid for their professional services.  The possibility of premature termination of services (known in legal circles as abandonment) is a serious ethical and liability risk.  Also, mental health practitioners are sometimes required to refer clients to treatment programs that seem inadequate in light of clients' clinical needs.  This may occur when a managed care organization has entered into an agreement with the treatment program to provide services at an attractive cost, as opposed to allowing clients and their clinicians to locate the most appropriate, and perhaps more expensive, program based solely on clinical criteria.

The recent – and dramatic – growth of mental health professionals’ interest in ethical issues is the product of diverse circumstances. These factors have fundamentally changed the way practitioners are educated and trained, as you are experiencing in this continuing education course.  In the next section of this course I will address the nature and implications of core values in the mental health professions.  Then I will provide an overview of ethical dilemmas in the professions and frameworks for ethical decision-making.

The Digital Period

In recent years, increasing numbers of practitioners have begun to use technology extensively to deliver services, administer programs, communicate with clients and colleagues, and gather information about clients.  Such technology includes online counseling, telephone counseling, avatar counseling, videoconferencing, self-guided Web-based interventions, electronic social networks, mobile apps, automated tutorials, e-mail, text messages, and a host of other services.

In addition, practitioners use various forms of technology to access, gather, and otherwise manage information about clients. Practitioners maintain encrypted electronic records, store sensitive information on their smartphones and in the “cloud,” and have the capacity to search for information about clients using Internet search engines. These dramatic changes in the ways that mental health services, supervision, and administration are provided have led to major efforts in the behavioral health professions to develop new ethical standards related to client confidentiality, informed consent, professional boundaries, access to records, emergency and crisis management, administration, licensure, competence, and collegial relationships, among others. 

Section Two

The Practical Implications of Professional

and Personal Values

The brief case examples I introduced in Section One raise a number of critically important issues about core professional values and the value base of the mental health professions.  The term value is hard to define. It derives from the Latin valere, meaning to be of worth. 

The subject of values has been central in the mental health professions.  Values have been important in several key respects, with regard to (Table 1):

Practitioners’ values clearly influence the kinds of relationships they have with clients, colleagues, and members of the broader society.  Clinicians make choices about the people with whom they want to work. For example, some practitioners prefer to devote their careers to clients they perceive as victims, such as victims of domestic violence and child abuse, and individuals born with severe physical disabilities. Other practitioners choose to work with clients perceived by many to be perpetrators, such as criminals convicted of crimes of violence or perpetrators of sexual abuse.  Also, some practitioners – again, because of their core values – choose to work primarily with low-income people, whereas others prefer to work with a more affluent clientele.

Practitioners’ values also influence their decisions about the intervention methods they will use in their work with clients – what types of interventions they will use in their work with individual clients, families, groups, communities, or organizations. For example, some clinicians prefer to use confrontational techniques in their work with sex offenders, believing that these are the most effective means for bringing about behavior change. Other practitioners who work with this same population may be critical of confrontational methods that seem dehumanizing and, because of their values, may prefer forms of counseling that emphasize the client’s right to self-determination and the building of therapeutic alliances.

Or a clinician who is an advocate for mental health services for low-income people may prefer direct confrontation with public officials – in the form of demonstrations, rallies, and harassment – in an effort to promote these healthcare services. For this practitioner, the value of providing basic mental health services takes precedence, and direct confrontation may be necessary to bring it about. Another practitioner may reject such tactics because of her belief in the value of collaboration and respectful exploration of differences.

Professionals’ values are also key to efforts to resolve ethical dilemmas that involve conflicts of professional duties and obligations.  As I mentioned earlier, ethical dilemmas ordinarily involve values that clash. When faced with such ethical dilemmas, practitioners ultimately base their decisions on their beliefs about the nature of professional values – particularly as they are translated into specific professional duties and obligations – and which values take precedence when they clash. Most recently practitioners have focused on the relationship between the profession’s values and its evolving ethical standards.

Among the mental health professions, social work provides the most visible and explicit statement of core professional values.  The NASW Code of Ethics (2017) includes a unique typology of values and a list of core values for the profession. After systematically reviewing many historical and contemporary discussions of social work values, in an effort to identify key themes and patterns, the committee that wrote the code generated a list of six core values and developed a broadly worded, value-based ethical principle and brief annotation for each of these values. The NASW Code of Ethics includes the following summary of the profession’s core values (Table 2):

The NASW Code of Ethics (2017) provides a good example of a profession’s efforts to formally identify core values and draw direct connections between professional values and ethical standards.

Reconciling Personal and Professional Values

Discussions of professional values tend to focus, in part, on the need for practitioners to clarify their personal values.  Practitioners recognize that their personal values influence how they view their clients, their intervention frameworks and methods, and their assessment of successful or unsuccessful outcomes. On occasion these personal values can prove troublesome, particularly if they conflict with laws or agency policy.      

Several issues related to personal and professional values deserve special emphasis. First, practitioners occasionally find that their personal values clash with those held by clients, employers, or the practitioners' profession.  Such conflicts are common and, perhaps, inevitable.  For example, clinicians sometimes encounter clients whose values and behaviors seem immoral and abhorrent.  Practitioners may have strong reactions to the ways in which some clients earn money (selling drugs, for example), parent their children, engage in self-destructive behavior, violate the law, or treat spouses or partners. How mental health practitioners respond in these situations – whether and how they share their opinions with clients – depends on practitioners’ views about the role of their personal values and opinions.

In some instances, the practitioner’s principal goal is to recognize that clients are struggling with their values and ethical dilemmas and to help clients address them. Examples include clients who are overwhelmed by the moral aspects of decisions or actions related to using illegal drugs, gambling, having an extramarital affair, caring for a disabled spouse or parent, aborting a pregnancy, divorcing a spouse, cheating on their income tax returns, and dealing with domestic violence.  To be helpful to clients, practitioners must learn to view problems through an ethical lens, as well as a clinical lens. 

Cultural and Religious Values

Value conflicts can arise especially when a practitioner is providing services to a client whose cultural or religious beliefs support behaviors or activities (for example, concerning healthcare, being faithful to or divorcing one’s spouse, disciplining children) that contradict a profession’s or the practitioner’s personal values. Thus, it is important for practitioners to recognize the influence of their own and clients’ religious and cultural values and beliefs.  In a number of situations – for example, those involving a client’s decision about abortion – religious beliefs have a significant influence on clients’ and practitioners’ interpretation of and response to the problems presented. 

Similarly, clients who seek counseling to address difficulties in their marriage or their relationships with their children may be influenced by religious beliefs. The practitioner may conclude, after a number of counseling sessions, that it is unlikely that a married couple will be able to resolve their conflicts and differences. The practitioner may think it is appropriate for the couple to consider separation and divorce. The couple, however, may reject this possibility because their religion prohibits divorce.  Similarly, a practitioner and client may have very different values with respect to physically disciplining children.

Mental health professionals disagree about the extent to which they should share their opinions and values with clients, as in the case examples provided earlier concerning practitioners whose values clashed with their clients’ values regarding homosexuality and divorce. Some practitioners argue that when clients struggle with moral issues, the clinician’s role is to provide a neutral sounding board for them. From this perspective, the professional’s values should not bias clients’ efforts to reach their own conclusions and resolve problems in their lives.  A competing view, however, is that practitioners should acknowledge their personal values to clients, so that clients have a full understanding of how the practitioner may be biased.

I have also discovered that conflicts can arise between practitioners’ values and those of their chosen mental health profession. A good example concerns the issue of sexual orientation. Some professional organizations have adopted a position that is embraced by most but not all its members. This is a policy that is troubling to a relatively small number of practitioners who, for personal and religious reasons, are opposed to homosexuality and gay rights (for example, to marry or adopt children). This kind of value conflict can pose significant problems for practitioners who are employed in settings that endorse the profession’s policy. In these instances, practitioners must make difficult ethical decisions about the nature of their obligations to their clients, their employers, their profession, and themselves.  The main point, I think, is that practitioners' principal challenge is to convert their profession's core values into meaningful action. 

In this section of the course I discussed the nature of professional values and their influence on the professions’ mission and intervention approaches. As I show in the next section, conflicts among these core values in the mental health professions sometimes produce complex ethical dilemmas requiring very difficult decisions. Throughout the discussion that follows I illustrate how the various perspectives on the professional values I have just reviewed have a direct bearing on practitioners’ ethical decisions.

Section Three

Ethical Standards in the Mental Health Professions

As I discussed earlier, an ethical dilemma occurs when a practitioner encounters conflict among professional duties and values and must decide which take precedence.  Moral philosophers and ethicists often refer to these situations as hard cases. These are cases that require a difficult choice between conflicting duties, or what the philosopher W. D. Ross (1930) referred to as conflicting prima facie duties -- duties that, when considered by themselves, practitioners are inclined to perform. For example, mental health professionals ordinarily want to respect clients’ right to privacy and protect them from harm. In some situations, however, doing both simultaneously may be difficult. Eventually, practitioners must choose what Ross (1930) called an actual duty from among conflicting prima facie duties.

Thus, hard cases are those in which prima facie duties clash and practitioners must choose between two incompatible but ordinarily appealing op­tions or between two incompatible and ordinarily unappealing options.  Something needs to “give” or be sacrificed.

Many ethical issues in mental health are not this complicated. We know, for example, that we should ordinarily tell clients the truth and should not lie to them. We also know that we should avoid actions that are likely to harm clients. These are obvious duties, and most of the time they do not clash. However, occasionally such duties do clash, for example, when telling clients the truth (perhaps as a candid response to a direct question about the status of a client’s mental health) is likely to exacerbate their emotional suffering.  Similarly, ordinarily we know that we should respect clients’ right to self-determination.  At the same time, we have a duty to protect clients from harm.  These prima facie duties clash when clients decide to engage in self-harming behaviors. These are hard cases.

In this section of the course I explore how practitioners can approach ethical dilemmas and use several tools – including codes of ethics, ethical principles, and ethical theory – to help make ethical decisions.

Codes of Ethics

Nearly all professions have developed codes of ethics to assist practitioners who face ethical dilemmas; most were developed during the twentieth cen­tury.  In the mental health professions, codes of ethics have been ratified by many groups, some of examples of which can be seen in Table 3.  For a list (and links) to over 50 professional ethical codes of mental health related organizations, go to Dr. Pope’s site here.

In addition, a group of professions that offer spiritual counseling has adopted the Common Code of Ethics for Chaplains, Pastoral Counselors, Pastoral Educators and Students.  The groups include the Association of Professional Chaplains (APC), American Association of Pastoral Counselors (AAPC), Association for Clinical Pastoral Education (ACPE), National Association of Catholic Chaplains (NACC), National Association of Jewish Chaplains (NAJC), and Canadian Association for Pastoral Practice and Education (CAPPE/ACPEP). 

These various codes of ethics serve several functions in addition to providing general guidance related to ethical dilemmas; they also protect the professions from outside regulation, establish norms related to the professions’ mission and methods, and enunciate standards that can help adjudicate allegations of misconduct.  More specifically, codes of ethics generally are designed to (Table 4):

It would be unreasonable to expect a code of ethics to provide explicit guidance in every instance in which professional duties clash and create an ethical dilemma. Codes of ethics are written for diverse purposes, including the inspiration of professions’ members, to set forth general ethical norms for professions, and to provide professions with a moral compass; too much specificity would overwhelm the code with detail.

Inevitably, situations arise where codes of ethics standards are ambiguous or even conflict.  Moreover, at times, a code’s provisions can conflict with agency policies, relevant laws or regulations, and ethical standards in allied professions.  Codes of ethics do not provide a formula for resolving such conflicts and typically do not specify which values, principles, and standards are most important and ought to outweigh others in instances when they conflict.  For example, the NASW Code of Ethics (2017) states that:

Further, the NASW Code of Ethics does not specify which values, principles, and standards are most important and ought to outweigh others in instances when they conflict. Reasonable differences of opinion can and do exist among social workers with respect to the ways in which values, ethical principles, and ethical standards should be rank ordered when they conflict. Ethical decision making in a given situation must apply the informed judgment of the individual social worker and should also consider how the issues would be judged in a peer review process where the ethical standards of the profession would be applied. . . . Social workers’ decisions and actions should be consistent with the spirit as well as the letter of this code. (NASW 2017:Purpose)

The various codes of ethics in the mental health professions address three kinds of issues and these are summarized in Table 5.

Ethical Responsibilities to Clients

Codes of ethics in the mental health professions typically address a wide range of issues involved in the delivery of services to individuals, families, couples, and small groups of clients. In particular, codes tend to focus on practitioners’ commitment to clients, clients’ right to self-determination, informed consent, professional competence, conflicts of interest, privacy and confidentiality, client access to records, sexual relationships and physical contact with clients, sexual harassment, payment for services, clients who lack decision-making capacity, interruption of services, and termination of services.

In recent years, codes of ethics have strengthened their content on standards concerning conflicts of interest and “dual” or “multiple” relationships with clients or former clients that carry a risk of exploitation or potential harm to the client.  Codes urge practitioners to take special precautions when they provide services to two or more persons who have a relationship with each other.  Clinicians who anticipate having to perform in potentially conflicting roles are advised to clarify their obligations with the parties involved and take appropriate action to minimize any conflict of interest (for example, when a counselor is asked to testify in a child custody dispute or divorce proceedings involving clients).  For example, the NASW Code of Ethics states

Social workers should not engage in dual or multiple relationships with clients or former clients in which there is a risk of exploitation or potential harm to the client. In instances when dual or multiple relationships are unavoidable, social workers should take steps to protect clients and are responsible for setting clear, appropriate, and culturally sensitive boundaries. (Dual or multiple relationships occur when social workers relate to clients in more than one relationship, whether professional, social, or business. Dual or multiple relationships can occur simultaneously or consecutively.) (standard 1.06[c])

Similarly, the AAMFT code (2015) states

Marriage and family therapists are aware of their influential positions with respect to clients, and they avoid exploiting the trust and dependency of such persons. Therapists, therefore, make every effort to avoid conditions and multiple relationships with clients that could impair professional judgment or increase the risk of exploitation. Such relationships include, but are not limited to, business or close personal relationships with a client or the client’s immediate family. When the risk of impairment or exploitation exists due to conditions or multiple roles, therapists take appropriate precautions. (standard 1.3)

Most codes include extensive guidelines concerning client privacy and confidentiality. Noteworthy are details concerning:

practitioners’ obliga­tion to disclose confidential information to protect third parties from serious harm;

confidentiality guidelines when working with families, couples, or small groups;

disclosure of confidential information to third-party payers; discussion of confidential information in public and semipublic areas, such as hallways, waiting rooms, elevators, and restaurants;

disclosure of confidential information during legal proceedings;

protection of the confidentiality of clients’ written and electronic records and of information transmitted to other parties through the use of such devices as computers, electronic mail, facsimile (fax) machines, and telephones;

the use of case material in teaching or training; and

protection of the confidentiality of deceased clients.

Practitioners are advised to discuss confidentiality policies and guidelines as soon as possible in the practitioner- client relationship and as needed throughout the course of the relationship. According to the APA Code of Ethics,

“Psychologists have a primary obligation and take reasonable precautions to protect confidential information obtained through or stored in any medium, recognizing that the extent and limits of confidentiality may be regulated by law or established by institutional rules or professional or scientific relationship" (standard 4.01). 

Similarly, the AMHCA code states

"Mental health counselors have a primary obligation to safeguard information about individuals obtained in the course of practice, teaching, or research. Personal information is communicated to others only with the person's written consent or in those circumstances where there is clear and imminent danger to the client, to others or to society. Disclosure of counseling information is restricted to what is necessary, relevant and verifiable” (principle 3). 

Codes also include considerable detail on practitioners’ sexual relationships with clients.  In addition to prohibiting sexual relationships with current clients, the codes gen­erally prohibit sexual activities or sexual contact with former clients.  It is important to note that the codes differ with regard to the extent of this prohibition.  For example, the ethical standards for psychiatrists and social workers generally prohibit sexual relationships with former clients.  In contrast, the standards for psychologists (APA), mental health counselors (AMHCA), and marriage and family therapists (AAMFT) prohibit sexual relationships with former clients within the two-year period following termination of the professional-client relationship (these organizations stress that practitioners who become sexually involved with clients more than two years after termination of the professional-client relationship bear the burden of demonstrating that there was no exploitation or injury to the client).  The standards for counselors adopted by the American Counseling Association prohibit sexual relationships with former clients within the five-year period following termination of the professional-client relationship. 

Sexual or romantic counselor-client interactions or relationships with former clients, their romantic partners, or their family members are prohibited for a period of 5 years following the last professional contact.  Counselors, before engaging in sexual or romantic interactions or relationships with clients, their romantic partners, or client family members after 5 years following the last professional contact, demonstrate forethought and document (in written form) whether the interactions or relationship can be viewed as exploitive in some way and/or whether there is still potential to harm the former client; in cases of potential exploitation and/or harm, the counselor avoids entering such an interaction or relationship. (standard A.5.b)

In contrast, the NASW Code of Ethics prohibits sexual relationships with former clients, regardless of the amount of time since termination of services but recognizes that exceptions may exist in truly extraordinary circumstances.  If social workers believe such exceptional circumstances exist, they assume the burden of any untoward consequences.

Social workers should not engage in sexual activities or sexual contact with former clients because of the potential for harm to the client. If social workers engage in conduct contrary to this prohibition or claim that an exception to this prohibition is warranted because of extraordinary circumstances, it is social workers--not their clients--who assume the full burden of demonstrating that the former client has not been exploited, coerced, or manipulated, intentionally or unintentionally. (standard 1.09[c])

Some codes also prohibit sexual activities or sexual contact with clients’ relatives or other individuals with whom clients maintain a close, personal relationship whenever a risk of exploitation or potential harm to the client exists. Furthermore, practitioners are advised not to provide clinical services to individuals with whom they have had a previous sexual relationship because of the likelihood that such a relationship would make it difficult for the clinician and client to maintain appropriate professional boundaries.  For example, the APA code states, “Psychologists do not engage in sexual intimacies with individuals they know to be close relatives, guardians, or significant others of current clients/patients. Psychologists do not terminate therapy to circumvent this standard” (standard 10.06) and “Psychologists do not accept as therapy clients/patients with whom they have engaged in sexual intimacies” (standard 10.07).

Some codes also address other forms of physical contact between practitioners and clients. For example, the NASW code acknowledges the possibility of appropriate physical contact (for example, briefly comforting a distraught child who has been removed from his or her home because of parental neglect or holding the hand of a nursing home resident whose spouse has died) but cautions social workers not to engage in physical contact with clients, such as cradling or caressing, when psychological harm to the client could result.

Social workers should not engage in physical contact with clients when there is a possibility of psychological harm to the client as a result of the contact (such as cradling or caressing clients). Social workers who engage in appropriate physical contact with clients are responsible for setting clear, appropriate, and culturally sensitive boundaries that govern such physical contact. (standard 1.10)

Some ethics codes also include specific provisions concerning the use of bartering (accepting goods or services from clients as payment for professional service). The NASW code, for example, stops short of banning bartering outright, recognizing that in some communities bartering may be a widely accepted form of payment. However, the code advises social workers to avoid bartering because of the potential for conflicts of interest, exploitation, and inappropriate boundaries in social workers’ relationships with clients. For example, if a client pays a social worker for counseling by performing some service – such as painting the social worker’s house or repairing the social worker’s car – and the service is somehow unsatisfactory, attempts to resolve the problem could interfere with the therapeutic relationship and seriously undermine the social worker’s effective delivery of counseling services.  Similar guidelines appear in the AMHCA code:

Mental health counselors ordinarily refrain from accepting goods or services from clients in return for counseling service because such arrangements create inherent potential for conflicts, exploitation and distortion of the professional relationship. Participation in bartering is only used when there is no exploitation, if the client requests it, if a clear written contract is established, and if such an arrangement is an accepted practice among professionals in the community. (principle 1.L.3)

Codes also address various issues pertaining to proper termination of services (for example, when services are no longer required or no longer serve the clients’ needs or interests, clients are not paying an overdue balance, or practitioners are leaving an employment setting).  The language in the ACA code is representative:

“Counselors terminate a counseling relationship when it becomes reasonably apparent that the client no longer needs assistance, is not likely to benefit, or is being harmed by continued counseling.  Counselors may terminate counseling when in jeopardy of harm by the client, or another person with whom the client has a relationship, or when clients do not pay fees as agreed upon.  Counselors provide pre-termination counseling and recommend other service providers when necessary” (standard A.11.c). 

Ethical Responsibilities to Colleagues

Many codes address issues concerning practitioners’ relation­ships with professional colleagues. These include respect for colleagues; proper treatment of confidential information shared by colleagues; interdisciplinary collaboration and disputes among colleagues; consultation with colleagues; re­ferral for services; sexual relationships with and sexual harassment of colleagues; and dealings with impaired, incompetent, and unethical colleagues. 

Collegial Interactions. Some codes encourage practitioners who are members of an interdisci­plinary team, such as in a health care or school setting, to draw explicitly on the perspectives, values, and experiences of their profession. If disagreements among team members cannot be resolved, practitioners are advised to pursue other avenues to address their concerns (for example, approaching an agency’s administrators or board of directors). Practitioners are also advised not to exploit disputes between a colleague and an em­ployer to advance their own interests or to exploit clients in a dispute with a colleague.

Consultation and referrals. Some codes include a number of standards concerning consulta­tion and referral for services.  Practitioners are obligated to seek colleagues’ advice and counsel whenever such consultation is in clients’ best interest, dis­closing the least amount of information necessary to achieve the purposes of the consultation. Codes also expect practitioners to keep informed of colleagues’ areas of expertise and competence and refer clients to other professionals when a colleague’s specialized knowledge or expertise is needed to serve clients fully or when practitioners believe they are not being effective or making reasonable progress with clients.

Dual relationships. Some codes also address dual and multiple relationships, specifically with respect to prohibiting sexual activities or contact between supervisors or educators and supervisees, students, trainees, or other colleagues over whom supervisors or educators exercise professional authority. In addition, codes prohibit sexual harassment of supervisees, students, trainees, or colleagues.  Contemporary codes recognize that practitioners need to maintain clear boundaries with each other as well as with clients.  This is important to avoid any actual or potential conflicts of interest, for example, when a former client is hired by a practitioner’s agency and becomes the practitioner’s colleague.  For example, the NASW Code of Ethics (2017) focuses explicitly on sexual relationships among colleagues:

Social workers who function as supervisors or educators should not engage in sexual activities or contact (including verbal, written, electronic, or physical contact) with supervisees, students, trainees, or other colleagues over whom they exercise professional authority. (standard 2.06[a])

Social workers should avoid engaging in sexual relationships with colleagues when there is potential for a conflict of interest. Social workers who become involved in, or anticipate becoming involved in, a sexual relationship with a colleague have a duty to transfer professional responsibilities, when necessary, to avoid a conflict of interest. (standard 2.06[b])

Collegial misconduct and impairment. The topics of collegial misconduct and impairment have become particularly prominent in ethics codes.   Most codes include standards pertaining to impaired, in­competent, and unethical colleagues. Practitioners who have direct knowl­edge of a colleague’s impairment (which may be caused by personal problems, psychosocial distress, substance abuse, or mental health difficulties, and which interferes with practice effectiveness), incompetence, or unethical conduct are expected to consult with that colleague when feasible or assist the colleague in taking remedial action. If these measures do not address the problem satisfactorily, practitioners may be required to take action through appropriate channels established by employers, agencies, professional associations, licensing and regulatory bodies, and other professional organizations.  According to the APA Code of Conduct,

"if an apparent ethical violation has substantially harmed or is likely to substantially harm a person or organization and is not appropriate for informal resolution . . . or is not resolved properly in that fashion, psychologists take further action appropriate to the situation. Such action might include referral to state or national committees on professional ethics, to state licensing boards, or to the appropriate institutional authorities. This standard does not apply when an intervention would violate confidentiality rights or when psychologists have been retained to review the work of another psychologist whose professional conduct is in question" (standard 1.05).

Comprehensive ethics code standards on these topics appear in the NASW Code of Ethics:

Social workers who have direct knowledge of a social work colleague's impairment that is due to personal problems, psychosocial distress, substance abuse, or mental health difficulties and that interferes with practice effectiveness should consult with that colleague when feasible and assist the colleague in taking remedial action. (standard 2.08[a])

Social workers who believe that a social work colleague's impairment interferes with practice effectiveness and that the colleague has not taken adequate steps to address the impairment should take action through appropriate channels established by employers, agencies, NASW, licensing and regulatory bodies, and other professional organizations. (standard 2.08[b])

Social workers who have direct knowledge of a social work colleague's incompetence should consult with that colleague when feasible and assist the colleague in taking remedial action. (standard 2.09[a])

Social workers should take adequate measures to discourage, prevent, expose, and correct the unethical conduct of colleagues, including unethical conduct using technology. (standard 2.10[a])

Social workers should be knowledgeable about established policies and procedures for handling concerns about colleagues' unethical behavior. Social workers should be familiar with national, state, and local procedures for handling ethics complaints. These include policies and procedures created by NASW, licensing and regulatory bodies, employers, agencies, and other professional organizations. (standard 2.10[b])

Social workers who believe that a colleague has acted unethically should seek resolution by discussing their concerns with the colleague when feasible and when such discussion is likely to be productive. (standard 2.10[c])

When necessary, social workers who believe that a colleague has acted unethically should take action through appropriate formal channels (such as contacting a state licensing board or regulatory body, an NASW committee on inquiry, or other professional ethics committees). (standard 2.10[d])

Social workers should defend and assist colleagues who are unjustly charged with unethical conduct. (standard 2.10[e])

Ethical Responsibilities in Practice Settings

Some codes address ethical issues that arise in social service agencies, human service organizations, private practice, and professional edu­cation programs. Standards pertain to supervision, consultation, education, or training; performance evaluation; client records; billing for ser­vices; client transfer; agency administration; continuing education and staff development; commitments to employers; and labor-management disputes.

Supervision and consultation. One major theme in some codes is that practitioners who provide supervision, consultation, education, or training should do so only within their areas of knowledge and competence.  Thus, a counselor who does not have extensive training and education in the treatment of eating disorders should not claim to have this expertise in order to provide collegial supervision or consultation.  Also, practitioners who provide supervision, consultation, education, or training should avoid engaging in any dual or multiple relationships when a risk of exploitation or potential harm exists. Some ethics codes require that practitioners who function as educators or field instructors for students take reasonable steps to ensure that clients are routinely informed when services are being provided by students.

Records. Several code standards pertain to client records. These require that records include sufficient, accurate, and timely documentation to facilitate the delivery of services and ensure continuity of services provided to clients in the future.  According to the AAMFT Code of Ethics, “Marriage and family therapists maintain accurate and adequate clinical and financial records” (standard 3.6).  Documentation in records should protect clients’ privacy to the greatest extent possible and appropriate, including only that information that is directly rel­evant to the delivery of services. In addition, codes require practitioners to store records properly to ensure reasonable future access; records should be maintained for the number of years required by state statutes or relevant contracts.  Further, practitioners should provide clients with reasonable access to their own records.  As stated in the AMHCA Code of Ethics, “All materials in the official record shall be shared with the client, who shall have the right to decide what information may be shared with anyone beyond the immediate provider of service and be informed of the implications of the materials to be shared” (principle 3.B).  As the NASW Code of Ethics states, clients’ access to their own record should be limited only in extreme circumstances:

Social workers should provide clients with reasonable access to records concerning the clients. Social workers who are concerned that clients' access to their records could cause serious misunderstanding or harm to the client should provide assistance in interpreting the records and consultation with the client regarding the records. Social workers should limit clients' access to their records, or portions of their records, only in exceptional circumstances when there is compelling evidence that such access would cause serious harm to the client. Both clients' requests and the rationale for withholding some or all of the record should be documented in clients' files. (standard 1.08[a])

Billing. Some codes stipulate that professionals who bill for services should establish and maintain practices that accurately reflect the nature and extent of services provided. Thus practitioners must not falsify billing records or submit fraudulent invoices.  

Providing concomitant treatment. Codes also urge practitioners to be particularly careful when an individual who is receiving services from another agency or colleague contacts a practitioner for services. Practitioners are expected to carefully consider the client’s needs before agreeing to provide services. To minimize confusion and conflict, some code standards state that practitioners should discuss with potential clients the nature of their current relationship with other service providers and the implications, including any benefits or risks, of entering into a relationship with a new service provider. If a new client has been served by another agency or colleague, practitioners should discuss with the client whether consultation with the previous service provider is in the client’s best interest.  According to the AMHCA Code of Ethics, “If a client is receiving services from another mental health professional or counselor, the mental health counselor secures consent from the client, informs that professional of the arrangement, and develops a clear agreement to avoid confusion and conflicts for the client” (principle 1.D.1). 

Agency administration. Some codes address ethical issues involving agency administration.  For example, the NASW code obligates social work administrators to advo­cate within and outside their agencies for adequate resources to meet clients’ needs and provide appropriate staff supervision. They also must promote re­source allocation procedures that are open and fair. In addition, administrators must take reasonable steps to ensure that the working environment for which they are responsible is consistent with and encourages compliance with the NASW Code of Ethics. They must take reasonable steps to provide or arrange for continuing education and staff development for all staff for whom they are responsible.

Social work administrators should advocate within and outside their agencies for adequate resources to meet clients' needs. (standard 3.07[a])

Social workers should advocate for resource allocation procedures that are open and fair. When not all clients' needs can be met, an allocation procedure should be developed that is nondiscriminatory and based on appropriate and consistently applied principles. (standard 3.07[b])

Social workers who are administrators should take reasonable steps to ensure that adequate agency or organizational resources are available to provide appropriate staff supervision. (standard 3.07[c])

Unlike most other codes in the mental health professions, the NASW code also includes a number of ethical standards for social work employees. Although social work employees are generally expected to adhere to commitments made to their employers and employing organizations, they should not allow an employing organization’s policies, procedures, regulations, or administrative orders to interfere with their ethical practice of social work. This standard is particularly important when professionals believe that supervisors or administrators have asked or instructed them to engage in practices that, in the practitioner’s opinion, are unethical. Thus social workers are obligated to take reasonable steps to ensure that their employing organizations’ practices are consistent with the NASW Code of Ethics (2017):

“Social work administrators should take reasonable steps to ensure that the working environment for which they are responsible is consistent with and encourages compliance with the NASW Code of Ethics. Social work administrators should take reasonable steps to eliminate any conditions in their organizations that violate, interfere with, or discourage compliance with the Code” (standard 3.07[d]).

Also, social workers should accept employment or arrange student field placements only in organizations that exercise fair personnel practices. Social workers should conserve agency funds where appropriate and must never misappropriate money or use it for unintended purposes.

A novel feature of the NASW code, in contrast to other ethics codes in the mental health professions, is its acknowledgment of ethical issues social workers sometimes face as a result of labor-management disputes. Although the code does not prescribe how social workers should handle such dilemmas, it recognizes the complexity of many labor-management disputes and does permit social workers to engage in organized action, including formation of and participation in labor unions, to improve services to clients and working conditions. The code states that “Reasonable differences of opinion exist among social workers concerning their primary obligation as professionals during an actual or threatened labor strike or job action” (standard 3.10[b]).

Ethical Responsibilities as Professionals

Most codes in the mental health professions highlight issues primarily related to practitioners’ professional integrity. Various standards pertain to professionals’ competence, obliga­tion to avoid any behavior that discriminates against others, private conduct, honesty, personal impairment, misrepresentation, solicitation of clients, and acknowledging credit.

Maintaining competency. Some codes also emphasize practitioners’ obligation to routinely review and critique the professional literature, participate in continuing education, and base their work on recog­nized knowledge, including empirically based knowledge, relevant to professional practice and ethics.  As the NASW Code of Ethics states,

Social workers should strive to become and remain proficient in professional practice and the performance of professional functions. Social workers should critically examine and keep current with emerging knowledge relevant to social work. Social workers should routinely review the professional literature and participate in continuing education relevant to social work practice and social work ethics. (standard 4.01[b])

Social workers should base practice on recognized knowledge, including empirically based knowledge, relevant to social work and social work ethics. (standard 4.01[c])

Professional behavior. Also, a number of code standards address professionals’ values and personal behavior, stating, for example, that professionals should not practice, condone, facilitate, or collaborate with any form of discrimination and should not permit their private conduct to interfere with their ability to fulfill their professional responsibilities.

Honesty in professional relationships. A prominent theme among the codes concerns practitioners’ obligation to be honest in their relationships with all parties, including accurately representing their professional qualifications, credentials, education, competence, and affiliations. Thus practitioners should not exaggerate or falsify their qualifications and credentials and should claim only those relevant professional credentials that they actually possess.  

Table 6 shows an example from the APA Codes.  For example, a counselor who has a doctorate in physics, and who entered the counseling profession as a second career after working for many years as a physicist, should not claim to have, or create the impression that he or she has, a doctorate that is relevant to counseling (for example, by using the title of Doctor in mental health settings). Also, practitioners are obligated to take responsibility and credit, including authorship credit, only for work they have actually performed and to which they have contributed. For example, psychologists should not claim to have had a prominent role in a research project to which they contributed minimally. Further, practitioners should honestly acknowledge the work of and contributions made by others. Therefore, it would be unethical for a therapist to draw on or benefit from a colleague’s work without acknowledging the source or contributions.

Solicitation of clients. Some ethics codes also require that practitioners not engage in uninvited solici­tation of clients who, because of their circumstances, are vulnerable to undue influence, manipulation, or coercion. According to these guidelines, practitioners are not permitted to approach vulnerable people in distress (for example, victims of a natural disaster or serious accident) and actively solicit them to become clients.  According to the APA code, “Psychologists do not engage, directly or through agents, in uninvited in-person solicitation of business from actual or potential therapy clients/patients or other persons who because of their particular circumstances are vulnerable to undue influence. However, this prohibition does not preclude (1) attempting to implement appropriate collateral contacts for the purpose of benefiting an already engaged therapy client/patient or (2) providing disaster or community outreach services" (standard 5.06).  Furthermore, some codes, such as the APA code, stipulate that practitioners must not solicit testimonial endorsements (for example, for adver­tising or marketing purposes) from current clients or from other persons who, because of their particular circumstances, are vulnerable to undue influence: “Psychologists do not solicit testimonials from current therapy clients/patients or other persons who because of their particular circumstances are vulnerable to undue influence" (standard 5.05).

Practitioner impairment. Most codes address issues involving practitioner impairment. Like all professionals, mental health professionals sometimes encounter personal problems. This is a normal part of life.  Typical code language states that practitioners must not allow their personal problems, psychoso­cial distress, legal problems, substance abuse, or mental health difficulties to interfere with their professional judgment and performance or jeopardize others for whom they have a professional responsibility. When practitioners find that their personal difficulties interfere with their professional judgment and performance, they are obligated to seek professional help, make adjustments to their workload, terminate their practice, or take other steps necessary to protect clients and others.  According to the ACA Code of Ethics:

Counselors are alert to the signs of impairment from their own physical, mental, or emotional problems and refrain from offering or providing professional services when such impairment is likely to harm a client or others. They seek assistance for problems that reach the level of professional impairment, and, if necessary, they limit, suspend, or terminate their professional responsibilities until such time it is determined that they may safely resume their work. Counselors assist colleagues or supervisors in recognizing their own professional impairment and provide consultation and assistance when warranted with colleagues or supervisors showing signs of impairment and intervene as appropriate to prevent imminent harm to clients. (standard C.2.g)

Ethical Responsibilities to the Profession

Mental health professionals’ ethical responsibilities are not limited to clients, colleagues, and the public at large; they also include the professions themselves. Most codes comment on professionals’ in­tegrity and obligation to maintain and promote high standards of practice by engaging in appropriate study and research, teaching, publication, presentations at professional conferences, consultation, service to the community and professional organizations, and legislative testimony.

In recent years mental health professionals have strengthened their appreciation of the role of evaluation and research. Relevant activities include needs assess­ments, program evaluations, clinical research and evaluations, and the use of empirically-based literature to guide practice. Codes of ethics include extensive guidelines concerning evaluation and research. The standards typically require practitioners to critically examine and keep current with emerging knowledge relevant to mental health and to use evaluation and research evidence in their professional practice.

Codes also require practitioners involved in evaluation and research to follow widely accepted guidelines concerning the protection of evaluation and research participants. Standards focus specifically on the role of informed consent procedures in evaluation and research, the need to ensure that evalu­ation and research participants have access to appropriate supportive services, the confidentiality and anonymity of information obtained during the course of evaluation and research, the obligation to report results accurately, and the handling of potential or real conflicts of interest and dual relationships involving evaluation and research participants.  The APA code includes extraordinarily comprehensive standards:

Standard 8.01. Institutional Approval
When institutional approval is required, psychologists provide accurate information about their research proposals and obtain approval prior to conducting the research. They conduct the research in accordance with the approved research protocol.

Standard 8.02. Informed Consent to Research
(a) When obtaining informed consent as required in Standard 3.10, Informed Consent, psychologists inform participants about (1) the purpose of the research, expected duration, and procedures; (2) their right to decline to participate and to withdraw from the research once participation has begun; (3) the foreseeable consequences of declining or withdrawing; (4) reasonably foreseeable factors that may be expected to influence their willingness to participate such as potential risks, discomfort, or adverse effects; (5) any prospective research benefits; (6) limits of confidentiality; (7) incentives for participation; and (8) whom to contact for questions about the research and research participants' rights. They provide opportunity for the prospective participants to ask questions and receive answers.

(b) Psychologists conducting intervention research involving the use of experimental treatments clarify to participants at the outset of the research (1) the experimental nature of the treatment; (2) the services that will or will not be available to the control group(s) if appropriate; (3) the means by which assignment to treatment and control groups will be made; (4) available treatment alternatives if an individual does not wish to participate in the research or wishes to withdraw once a study has begun; and (5) compensation for or monetary costs of participating including, if appropriate, whether reimbursement from the participant or a third-party payor will be sought.

Standard 8.03. Informed Consent for Recording Voices and Images in Research
Psychologists obtain informed consent from research participants prior to recording their voices or images for data collection unless (1) the research consists solely of naturalistic observations in public places, and it is not anticipated that the recording will be used in a manner that could cause personal identification or harm, or (2) the research design includes deception, and consent for the use of the recording is obtained during debriefing.

Standard 8.04. Client/Patient, Student, and Subordinate Research Participants
(a) When psychologists conduct research with clients/patients, students, or subordinates as participants, psychologists take steps to protect the prospective participants from adverse consequences of declining or withdrawing from participation.

(b) When research participation is a course requirement or an opportunity for extra credit, the prospective participant is given the choice of equitable alternative activities.

Standard 8.05. Dispensing With Informed Consent for Research
Psychologists may dispense with informed consent only (1) where research would not reasonably be assumed to create distress or harm and involves (a) the study of normal educational practices, curricula, or classroom management methods conducted in educational settings; (b) only anonymous questionnaires, naturalistic observations, or archival research for which disclosure of responses would not place participants at risk of criminal or civil liability or damage their financial standing, employability, or reputation, and confidentiality is protected; or (c) the study of factors related to job or organization effectiveness conducted in organizational settings for which there is no risk to participants' employability, and confidentiality is protected or (2) where otherwise permitted by law or federal or institutional regulations.

Standard 8.06. Offering Inducements for Research Participation
(a) Psychologists make reasonable efforts to avoid offering excessive or inappropriate financial or other inducements for research participation when such inducements are likely to coerce participation.

(b) When offering professional services as an inducement for research participation, psychologists clarify the nature of the services, as well as the risks, obligations, and limitations.

Standard 8.07. Deception in Research
(a) Psychologists do not conduct a study involving deception unless they have determined that the use of deceptive techniques is justified by the study's significant prospective scientific, educational, or applied value and that effective nondeceptive alternative procedures are not feasible.

(b) Psychologists do not deceive prospective participants about research that is reasonably expected to cause physical pain or severe emotional distress.

(c) Psychologists explain any deception that is an integral feature of the design and conduct of an experiment to participants as early as is feasible, preferably at the conclusion of their participation, but no later than at the conclusion of the data collection, and permit participants to withdraw their data.

Standard 8.08. Debriefing
(a) Psychologists provide a prompt opportunity for participants to obtain appropriate information about the nature, results, and conclusions of the research, and they take reasonable steps to correct any misconceptions that participants may have of which the psychologists are aware.

(b) If scientific or humane values justify delaying or withholding this information, psychologists take reasonable measures to reduce the risk of harm.

(c) When psychologists become aware that research procedures have harmed a participant, they take reasonable steps to minimize the harm.

Standard 8.09. Humane Care and Use of Animals in Research
(a) Psychologists acquire, care for, use, and dispose of animals in compliance with current federal, state, and local laws and regulations, and with professional standards.

(b) Psychologists trained in research methods and experienced in the care of laboratory animals supervise all procedures involving animals and are responsible for ensuring appropriate consideration of their comfort, health, and humane treatment.

(c) Psychologists ensure that all individuals under their supervision who are using animals have received instruction in research methods and in the care, maintenance, and handling of the species being used, to the extent appropriate to their role.

(d) Psychologists make reasonable efforts to minimize the discomfort, infection, illness, and pain of animal subjects.

(e) Psychologists use a procedure subjecting animals to pain, stress, or privation only when an alternative procedure is unavailable and the goal is justified by its prospective scientific, educational, or applied value.

(f) Psychologists perform surgical procedures under appropriate anesthesia and follow techniques to avoid infection and minimize pain during and after surgery.

(g) When it is appropriate that an animal's life be terminated, psychologists proceed rapidly, with an effort to minimize pain and in accordance with accepted procedures.

Standard 8.10. Reporting Research Results
(a) Psychologists do not fabricate data.

(b) If psychologists discover significant errors in their published data, they take reasonable steps to correct such errors in a correction, retraction, erratum, or other appropriate publication means.

Standard 8.11. Plagiarism
Psychologists do not present portions of another's work or data as their own, even if the other work or data source is cited occasionally.

Standard 8.12. Publication Credit
(a) Psychologists take responsibility and credit, including authorship credit, only for work they have actually performed or to which they have substantially contributed.

(b) Principal authorship and other publication credits accurately reflect the relative scientific or professional contributions of the individuals involved, regardless of their relative status. Mere possession of an institutional position, such as department chair, does not justify authorship credit. Minor contributions to the research or to the writing for publications are acknowledged appropriately, such as in footnotes or in an introductory statement.

(c) Except under exceptional circumstances, a student is listed as principal author on any multiple-authored article that is substantially based on the student's doctoral dissertation. Faculty advisors discuss publication credit with students as early as feasible and throughout the research and publication process as appropriate.

Standard 8.13. Duplicate Publication of Data
Psychologists do not publish, as original data, data that have been previously published. This does not preclude republishing data when they are accompanied by proper acknowledgment.

Standard 8.14. Sharing Research Data for Verification
(a) After research results are published, psychologists do not withhold the data on which their conclusions are based from other competent professionals who seek to verify the substantive claims through reanalysis and who intend to use such data only for that purpose, provided that the confidentiality of the participants can be protected and unless legal rights concerning proprietary data preclude their release. This does not preclude psychologists from requiring that such individuals or groups be responsible for costs associated with the provision of such information.

(b) Psychologists who request data from other psychologists to verify the substantive claims through reanalysis may use shared data only for the declared purpose. Requesting psychologists obtain prior written agreement for all other uses of the data.

Standard 8.15. Reviewers
Psychologists who review material submitted for presentation, publication, grant, or research proposal review respect the confidentiality of and the proprietary rights in such information of those who submitted it.

Ethical Responsibilities to Society at Large

Some ethics codes also address professionals’ obligation to address broader societal issues.  The most explicit example is the NASW Code of Ethics.  The social work profession has always been committed to social justice. This commitment is clearly and forcefully reflected in the preamble to the code of ethics and in the final section of the code’s ethical standards. The standards explicitly highlight social workers’ obligation to engage in activities that promote social justice and the general welfare of society “from local to global levels” (standard 6.01). These activities may include facilitating public discussion of social policy issues; providing professional services in public emergencies; engaging in social and political action (for example, lobbying and legislative activity) to address basic human needs; promoting conditions that encourage respect for the diversity of cultures and social diversity; and acting to prevent and eliminate domination, exploitation, and discrimination against any person, group, or class of people.

This section of the course has focused on ethical standards in the mental health professions.  I reviewed the nature and purposes of codes of ethics and provided a detailed overview of issues that are commonly addressed in codes of ethics.  Now I will provide an introduction to ethical theory and an ethical decision-making protocol that is used by many mental health professionals.

Section Four

Ethical Decision-making: A Practical Strategy

As I discussed earlier in the course, only recently – considering the length of time that the various mental health professions have existed – have these professions devoted substantial attention to the subject of ethical dilem­mas. Especially since the early 1980s, the increase in education, training, and scholarship on the subject has been significant.

One key trend in professional education and training is to introduce students and practitioners to ethical theories and principles that may help them analyze and resolve ethical dilemmas. These include theories and principles of what moral philoso­phers call metaethics, normative ethics, and practical (also called applied) ethics.

Metaethics.  Briefly, metaethics concerns the meaning of ethical terms or language and the derivation of ethical principles and guidelines. Typical metaethical questions include the meaning of the terms right and wrong and good and bad. What criteria should we use to judge whether someone has engaged in unethical conduct? How should we go about formulating ethical principles to guide individuals who struggle with moral choices?   Normative ethics attempts to answer the question, “Which general moral norms for the guidance and evaluation of conduct should we accept and why?”  Practical (or applied) ethics is the attempt to apply ethical norms and theories to specific problems and contexts, such as professions, organizations, and public policy.

With respect to metaethics, some philosophers, known as cognitivists, believe that it is possible to identify objective criteria for determining what is ethically right and wrong, or good and bad. Others, however, question whether this is possible. These so-called noncognitivists argue that such criteria are necessarily subjective, and any ethical principles we create ultimately reflect our biases and personal preferences.

Like philosophers, mental health professionals disagree about the objectivity of ethical principles. Some, for example, believe that it is possible to establish universal principles upon which to base ethical decisions and practice, perhaps in the form of a sanctioned code of ethics or “God-given” tenets. Proponents of this point of view are known as absolutists. Others – known as relativists – reject this point of view, arguing instead that ethical standards depend on cultural practices, political climate, contemporary norms and moral standards, and other contextual considerations.

The popularity of relativism and absolutism has waxed and waned through­out the ages. Belief in absolutism has generally coincided with belief in the dogmas of orthodox religion; absolutism has tended to fade, with accompanying increases in the popularity of relativism, during times of widespread religious skepticism. However, recent years have seen a declining tolerance for relativism and a wish for ethical standards that would serve as clear moral guides for individuals who face complex ethical dilemmas. This is especially true in some of the mental health professions that embrace a number of “bottom line” values, such as nondiscrimination, social justice, respect for the dignity of persons, and professional integrity.   As we shall see shortly, over time the ethical standards in the mental health professions have become clearer, more precise, and comprehensive.

A Brief Overview of Ethical Theory

Normative ethics. In contrast to metaethics, which is often abstract, normative ethics tends to be of special concern to mental health professionals because of its immediate relevance to practice. Normative ethics consists of attempts to apply ethical theories and principles to actual ethical dilemmas. Such guidance is especially useful when practitioners face conflicts among duties they are ordinarily inclined to perform.

Theories of normative ethics are generally grouped under two main head­ings. Deontological theories (from the Greek deontos, ‘of the obligatory’) are those that claim that certain actions are inherently right or wrong, or good and bad, without regard for their consequences. Thus a deontologist -- the best known is Immanuel Kant, the eighteenth-century German philosopher -- might argue that telling the truth is inherently right, and thus mental health practitioners should never lie to clients, even if it appears that lying might be more beneficial to the parties involved. The same might be said about keeping promises made to colleagues, upholding contracts with managed care organizations and insurance companies, obeying a mandatory reporting law (related to child or elder abuse and neglect, for example), and so on. For deontologists, rules, rights, and principles are sacred and inviolable. The ends do not necessarily justify the means, particularly if they require violating some important rule, right, principle, or law.

One well-known problem with this deontological perspective is that it is often easy to imagine conflicting arguments that use similar language about inherently right (or wrong) actions. Thus one can imagine a deontologist who argues that all human beings have an inherent right to life and that it would be immoral for a mental health counselor to be involved in an act of assisted suicide, for example, with a client who is gravely ill and wants to end his life. However, another deontologist might argue that counselors have an inherent obligation to respect clients’ right to self-determination so long as the actions involved are voluntary and informed and that it therefore is permissible for counselors to be involved in an act of assisted suicide.  Similarly, one deontologist might argue that it would be unethical, because of her belief in the inherent sacredness of all lives, for a mental health counselor to provide pregnant clients with any information about abortion options, while another deontologist might argue that counselors have an inherent moral duty to honor clients’ right to self-determination when they ask for information about abortion options.

The second major group of theories, teleological theories (from the Greek teleios, ‘brought to its end or purpose’), takes a different approach to ethical choices. From this point of view, the rightness of any action is determined by the goodness of its consequences. Teleologists think it is naive to make ethical choices without weighing potential consequences. To do otherwise is to engage in what the philosopher Smart referred to as “rule worship.” Therefore, from this perspective (sometimes known as consequentialism), the responsible strategy entails an attempt to anticipate the outcomes of various courses of action and to weigh their relative merits.

There are two major teleological schools of thought: egoism and utilitari­anism. Egoism is a form of teleology that is not typically found in the mental health professions, since practitioners tend to be altruistic; according to this point of view, when faced with conflicting duties people should maximize their own good and enhance their self-interest.

In contrast, utilitarianism, which holds that an action is right if it promotes the maximum good, has historically been the most popular teleological theory and has, at least implicitly, served as justification for many decisions made by mental health practitioners. According to the classic form of utilitarianism – as originally formulated by the English philosophers Jeremy Bentham in the eighteenth century, and John Stuart Mill in the nineteenth century – when faced with conflicting duties one should do that which will produce the greatest good.  In principle, then, a practitioner should engage in a calculus to determine which set of consequences will produce the greatest good. Thus a utilitarian might argue that violating a client’s right to confidentiality in order to protect a third party from harm is justifiable in order to bring about a greater good. 

One problem with utilitarianism is that this framework, like deontology, sometimes can be used to justify competing options. Some philosophers argue that it is important and helpful to distinguish between act and rule utilitarianism – a distinction that I find particularly relevant in the mental health professions. According to act utili­tarianism, the rightness of an action is determined by the goodness of the consequences produced in that individual case, or by that particular act. One does not need to look beyond the implications of this one instance. By contrast, rule utilitarianism takes into account the long-term consequences likely to result if one generalizes from the case at hand or treats it as a precedent. A good illustration of the distinction between act and rule utilitarianism concerns the well-known mandatory reporting laws related to child abuse and neglect. According to these statutes, now found in every state in the United States, mental health practitioners and other mandated reporters are required to notify child welfare or protective service authorities whenever they suspect child abuse or neglect.  Circumstances sometimes arise that lead practitioners to conclude that a client’s best interests would not be served by complying with the mandatory reporting law. In these instances, practitioners believe that more harm than good would result if they obeyed the law. What these practitioners are claiming, at least implicitly, is that it is permissible to violate a law when it appears that greater good would result.

This is a classic example of act utilitarianism. An act utilitarian might justify violating a mandatory reporting law if it can be demonstrated convincingly that this would result in greater good (for example, if the practitioner is able to show that she would not be able to continue working with the family if she reported the suspected abuse or neglect and that her continuing to work with the family offers the greatest potential for preventing further neglect or abuse). A rule utilitarian, however, might argue that the precedent established by this deliberate violation of the law would generate more harm than good, regardless of the benefits produced by this one particular violation. A rule utilitarian might argue that the precedent established by this case might encourage other practitioners to take matters into their own hands rather than report suspected abuse or neglect to local protective service officials and that this would, in the long run, be more harmful than helpful.

A noteworthy problem with utilitarianism, then, is that different people are likely to consider different factors and weigh them differently, as a result of their different life experiences, values, education, political ideologies, and so on. In addition, when taken to the extreme, classic utilitarianism can justify trampling on the rights of a vulnerable minority in order to benefit the majority. In principle, a callous utilitarian practitioner (let’s hope no such person exists) could argue that policies that protect the civil rights of mentally ill people (for example, extensive competency evaluations before involuntary commitment) are too costly, especially when compared to the costs and benefits of simply removing “public nuisances” from the streets. In light of countless instances throughout history in which the rights of minorities and other oppressed groups have been insensitively violated to benefit the majority, practitioners have good reason to be concerned about such strict applications of utilitarian principles.

Two other ethical theories have important implications for mental health practitioners: communitarianism (also known as community-based theory) and the ethics of care.  According to communitarianism, ethical decisions should be based primarily on what is best for the community and communal values (the common good, social goals, and cooperative virtues) as opposed to individual self-interest.  The ethics of care, in contrast, reflects a collection of moral perspectives more than a single moral principle.  This view emphasizes the importance in ethics and moral decision making of the need to care for, and willingness to act on behalf of, persons with whom one has a significant relationship.  For practitioners this perspective emphasizes the critical importance of their commitment to their clients.

One of the enduring challenges in mental health is that practitioners will not always agree on the applicability of different theoretical perspectives and about the rank-ordering of conflicting values and duties. Practitioners can have reasonable differences of opinion about which values and obligations – for example, related to client confidentiality, protection of third parties, informed consent, and conflicts of interest – ought to weigh more heavily. Having said this, I should also acknowledge that in many instances practitioners will agree about the ranking of competing values or duties. Although exceptions will always exist in the hard cases, which duties should take prece­dence when they conflict is often clear.

The Process of Ethical Decision Making

There is no simple, tidy formula for resolving ethical dilemmas.  By definition, ethical dilemmas are complex.  In the first section of this course I shared a number of ethical dilemmas that might lead to disagreement among mental health professionals.  That is, reasonable, thoughtful practitioners can disagree about the ethical principles and standards that ought to guide ethical decisions in any given case. But ethicists generally agree that it is important to approach ethical decisions systematically, to follow a series of steps to ensure that all aspects of the ethical dilemma are addressed. By following a series of clearly formulated steps, practitioners can enhance the quality of the ethical decisions they make and the likelihood that they will protect clients, third parties, and themselves. In my experience, it is helpful for mental health professionals to follow the steps in Table 7 when attempting to resolve ethical dilemmas.

More specifically, when I encounter an ethical dilemma I find it helpful to identify every possible ethical issue that warrants attention.  Sometimes I will skim lists of ethical issues in the profession to be sure I haven’t missed anything.  I try to identify every individual, group, and organization that might be affected by my ethical decision.  Possibilities include clients, clients’ family members and acquaintances, neighborhood residents, community and religious groups, clients’ employers, public and private agencies, and practitioners and their employers.  I also think through every possible course of action I can imagine, along with their possible consequences.  Only then do I consider the arguments for and against different courses of action, based on ethical theories, principles, guidelines, and standards; practice theory and principles in the mental health professions; relevant laws and regulations; and my personal values.

Ordinarily, mental health professionals should not make ethical decisions alone. This is not to suggest that ethical decisions are always group decisions. Sometimes they are, but in many instances individual practitioners ultimately make the decisions once they have had an opportunity to consult with colleagues and appropriate experts.

Typically, practitioners should consider consulting with colleagues who are involved in similar work and who are likely to understand the issues – supervisors, agency administrators, attorneys, and ethics experts. Sometimes this consultation may be obtained informally, in the form of casual and spon­taneous conversation with colleagues, and sometimes, particularly in agency settings, through more formal means, such as with institutional ethics commit­tees.

The concept of institutional ethics committees (IECs) emerged most promi­nently in 1976, when the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that Karen Ann Quinlan’s family and physicians should consult an ethics committee in decid­ing whether to remove her from life-support systems (although a number of hospitals have had something resembling ethics committees since at least the 1920s). The court based its ruling in part on an important article that appeared in the Baylor Law Review in 1975, in which a pediatrician, Karen Teel, advocated the use of ethics committees when health care professionals face difficult ethical choices.

Ethics committees, which can include representatives from various disci­plines, often provide case consultation in addition to education and training. A large percentage of agency-based ethics committees provide nonbinding ethics consultation and can offer an opportunity for practitioners to think through case-specific issues with colleagues who have knowledge of ethical issues as a result of their experiences, familiarity with relevant ethical concepts and literature, or specialized ethics training. Although IECs are not always able to provide definitive opinions about the complex issues that are frequently brought to their attention (nor should they be expected to), they can provide a valuable forum for thorough and critical analyses of difficult ethical dilemmas.

There are two important reasons for obtaining consultation. The first is that experienced and thoughtful consultants may offer useful insights concerning the case and may raise issues the practitioner had not considered. I think there is something to the expression “two heads are better than one.” 

The second reason is that such consultation may help practitioners protect themselves if they are sued or have complaints filed against them because of the decisions they make. Practitioners who seek consultation demonstrate that they approached the decision carefully and prudently, and this can help if someone alleges that the practitioner made an inappropriate decision hastily and carelessly.

Once the practitioner has carefully considered the various ethical issues, including the professional values and duties that conflict; identified the indi­viduals, groups, and organizations that are likely to be affected by the ethical decision; tentatively identified all viable courses of action and the participants involved in each, along with the potential benefits and risks for each; thoroughly examined the reasons in favor of and opposed to each course of action (con­sidering relevant ethical theories, principles, and guidelines; codes of ethics; practice theory and principles in the mental health professions; and personal values); and consulted with colleagues and appropriate experts, it is time to make a decision. In some instances, the decision will seem clear. Going through the decision-making process will have clarified and illuminated the issues so that the mental health practitioner’s ethical obligation seems unambiguous.

In other instances, however, practitioners may still feel somewhat un­certain about their ethical obligation. These are the hard cases and are not uncommon in ethical decision making. After all, situations that warrant full-scale ethical decision making, with all the steps that this entails, are, by definition, complicated. If they were not complex, these situations could have been resolved easily and simply at an earlier stage. Thus it should not be surprising that many ethical dilemmas remain controversial even after practitioners have taken the time to examine them thoroughly and systematically. Such is the nature of ethical dilemmas.

This is similar to what occurs in mental health professionals’ discussions of complicated, controversial clinical cases.  No one expects all clinical practitioners to agree on a treatment plan when faced with an especially complicated case, particularly if the practitioners draw on different theoretical perspectives, personal and professional experiences, political ideologies, and so on. One should expect no different when the focus is on an ethical dilemma. What clients and other affected parties have a right to expect is that practitioners involved in the decision will be thorough, thoughtful, sensitive, and fair.

Once the decision is made, practitioners should always be careful to document the steps involved in the decision-making process. Ethical decisions are just as much a part of professional practice as clinical interventions, and they should become part of the record. This is simply sound professional practice. Both the counselor involved in the case and other practitioners who may become involved in the case may need access to these notes at some time in the future.

In addition, it is extremely important to prepare notes on the ethical decision making process in the event that the case results in an ethics complaint or legal proceedings (for example, a complaint filed against the practitioner). As mentioned earlier, carefully written notes documenting the practitioner’s diligence can protect the practitioner from allegations of misconduct, malpractice, or negligence.

Mental health professionals need to decide how much detail to include in their doc­umentation. Too much detail can be problematic, particularly if the practitioner’s records are subpoenaed. Sensitive details about the client’s life and circumstances may be exposed against the client’s wishes. At the same time, practitioners can encounter problems if their documentation is too brief and skimpy, especially if the lack of detail affects the quality of care provided in the future or by other professionals. In short, practitioners need to include the level of detail that facilitates the delivery of service without exposing clients unnecessarily, consistent with generally accepted standards in the profession.

In addition, practitioners should always pay close attention to, and evaluate the consequences of, their ethical decisions. This is important in order to be accountable to clients, employers, and funding sources and, if necessary, to provide documentation in the event of an ethics complaint, malpractice claim, or lawsuit. This may take the form of routine case monitoring, consultation with colleagues or an ethics committee, or more extensive evaluation using the variety of research tools now available to practitioners.

As I noted in the preceding discussion, it would be a mistake to assume that systematic ethical decision making will always produce clear and unambiguous results. Practitioners’ different theoretical perspectives, personal and professional experi­ences, educational backgrounds, values, and biases will inevitably combine to produce differing points of view. This is just fine, particularly if we are confident that sustained dialogue among practitioners about the merits of their respective views is likely to enhance their understanding and insight. As in all other aspects of clinical work in the mental health professions, the process is often what matters most.

In this section I examined the nature of ethical decision-making and introduced a framework that you may find useful when you encounter an ethical dilemma.  I now turn to a more detailed discussion and analysis of ethics-related risk management issues in the mental health professions.

Section Five

Ethics, Risk-management and Ethical Misconduct

As I discussed in the earlier sections of this course, many ethical issues that practitioners encounter raise difficult moral choices – for example, whether practitioners are always obligated to be truthful and to respect clients’ right to self-determination, protect clients’ privacy and confidentiality, and avoid social contact with former clients.  Many of these ethical issues do not raise legal questions or issues that would warrant discipline by a regulatory body, such as a state licensing board, or a professional body.  For example, whether a particular practitioner ought to be entirely truthful in response to a client’s query about the practitioner's own substance abuse history does not involve legal questions or questions of misconduct. Instead, this sort of ethical dilemma is more likely to involve ethical issues in their most innocent form, that is, ethical issues requiring thoughtful deliberation and application of sound ethical principles. The same holds for practitioners' decisions about accepting gifts or social invitations (for example, wedding and graduation invitations) from clients. These are the issues about which reasonable practitioners may disagree.

However, some ethical issues in mental health involve complex legal and risk-management issues. They raise questions about ethical misconduct and wrongdoing of a sort that may constitute violations of the law, professional codes of ethics and standards, and publicly enacted regulations. These are cases that occasionally result in lawsuits, ethics complaints, or criminal charges filed against practitioners.

In this section of the course I discuss various examples of unethical behavior or pro­fessional misconduct. Some cases involve genuine mistakes practitioners may make that lead to allegations of unethical behavior or professional misconduct. Examples include practitioners who simply forget to obtain clients’ consent before sharing confidential records with third parties, provide counseling after neglecting to renew their license, and inadvertently bill insurance companies for services that were not rendered. These are cases in which practitioners do not intend to harm or defraud anyone; rather, these are cases in which practitioners unintentionally make mistakes that injure someone or some organization. The injury is sufficiently serious that the injured party charges the practitioner with some form of unethical behavior or professional misconduct.

In contrast, other cases are related to the ethical dilemmas I discussed in earlier sections of the course, situations where professionals face difficult ethical decisions and do their best to handle them responsibly. These practitioners may be remarkably conscientious in the way they go about making the ethical decision. They may review relevant literature, consult with colleagues and supervisors who have expertise in the subject, document their decision making, and so on. What may happen despite this thoroughness and diligence, however, is that some individual or organization may allege that the practitioner mishandled the case and acted unethically. Some party may file a lawsuit or ethics complaint alleging that the practitioner violated prevailing ethical standards in her or his profession and that some sort of injury resulted. An example is a psychologist or counselor who has to decide whether to disclose confidential information about a client who is HIV positive in order to protect the client’s lover, who is not aware of her lover’s HIV-positive status. The practitioner has to choose between the client’s right to confidentiality and the practitioner’s obligation to protect a third party from harm. It is not hard to imagine that a practitioner in this predicament might be sued or have a complaint filed against her no matter what course of action she takes. If she respects her client’s right to confidentiality and the client’s lover subsequently becomes infected, the client’s lover might sue or file an ethics complaint against the practitioner alleging that the practitioner failed to protect her from serious harm. Conversely, if the practitioner discloses the confidential information, without the client’s permission, in order to protect the client’s lover from harm, the client might sue or file an ethics complaint against the practitioner alleging that the practitioner violated the client’s right to confidentiality. Thus in some cases, even the most conscientious, thoughtful, and prudent mental health practitioners can face a complaint alleging ethical misconduct or unprofessional behavior.

In addition, some cases involve allegations that a practitioner engaged in gross professional misconduct and knowingly harmed a client or some other party. These are not the cases in which practitioners inadvertently make harmful mistakes, or make difficult ethical decisions in a responsible manner but in a way that triggers an ethics complaint or lawsuit. Rather, these involve allegations that practitioners willfully and knowingly violated individuals’ rights. Examples include practitioners who become sexually involved with clients, extort money from clients, and commit fraud against insurance companies.  Occasionally these cases may also result in criminal charges.

The Adjudication of Mental Health Professionals

Practitioners are held accountable for professional misconduct in three promi­nent ways. These include:

Ethics complaints filed against members of professional organizations (such as the AAMFT, APA, AMHCA, ACA and NASW)

Ethics complaints filed with state licens­ing or regulatory boards

Lawsuits filed against practitioners

In addition, criminal charges may be filed against practitioners, although this is relatively rare.

In general, ethics complaints filed against mental health practitioners cite a wide variety of the professions’ ethical standards, including those related to confidentiality, privacy, privileged communication, informed consent, sexual misconduct, dual relationships, conflicts of interest, practitioners’ relationships with col­leagues, and delivery of services.

Ethics complaints filed against practitioners with a professional organization to which they belong are ordinarily processed using a peer review model. A common model includes a hearing during which the complainant (the person filing the complaint), the respondent (the person against whom the complaint is filed), and witnesses have an opportunity to testify. After hearing all parties and dis­cussing the testimony, the hearing panel presents a report that summarizes its findings and presents its recommendations. Recommendations may include sanctions or various forms of corrective action, such as suspension from the professional organization, mandated supervision or consultation, censure in the form of a letter, restitution, or instructions to send the complainant a letter of apology. In some cases, the sanction may be publicized through local and national newsletters or general circulation newspapers. In some cases, particularly matters that do not involve allegations of extreme misconduct, a professional organization offers complainants and respondents the opportunity for mediation rather than more formal adjudication.

State legislatures also empower licensing or regulatory boards to process ethics complaints filed against mental health professionals. Ordinarily, these boards appoint a panel of colleagues to review the complaint and, if necessary, conduct a hearing.  Licensing and regulatory bodies use formal procedures to process and adjudicate complaints and can impose various sanctions (for example, probation or license suspension or revocation) or requirements for corrective action.

In addition, growing numbers of mental health practitioners have been named in lawsuits alleging some form of ethical misconduct or malpractice. This trend is clearly reflected in liability claims filed against practitioners.

Claims filed against mental health practitioners tend to fall into two broad groups. The first includes claims that allege that practitioners carried out their duties improperly or in a fashion inconsistent with their profession’s standards (often called acts of commission or of misfeasance or malfeasance). Examples include improper treatment of a client (for example, using an unorthodox treatment technique or one for which one has not received proper training), sexual misconduct, breach of client confidentiality, wrongful removal of a child from a home, assault and battery, improper peer review, and improper termination of services.

The second broad category includes claims that allege that practitioners failed to perform a duty that they are ordinarily expected to perform, according to the profession’s standards (known as acts of omission or nonfeasance). Examples include failure to obtain a client’s informed consent before releasing confidential information, prevent a client’s suicide, be available when needed, protect third parties from harm, supervise a client properly, and refer a client for consultation or treatment by a specialist.

Of course, not all claims filed against mental health practitioners are substantiated. Some claims are frivolous, and others lack the evidence necessary to demonstrate malpractice and negligence. However, many claims are substantiated, ultimately costing practitioners considerable expense and emotional anguish (although malpractice insurance coverage helps to ease the financial burden).

Mental health practitioners must know what kinds of professional misconduct or un­ethical behavior constitute malpractice. Malpractice is a form of negligence that occurs when a practitioner, or any other professional, acts in a manner incon­sistent with the profession’s standard of care – the way an ordinary, reasonable, and prudent professional would act under the same or similar circumstances.

Lawsuits and liability claims that allege malpractice are civil suits, in contrast to criminal proceedings. Ordinarily, civil suits are based on tort or contract law, with plaintiffs (the individuals bringing the suit) seeking some sort of compensation for injuries they claim to have incurred.  These injuries may be economic (for example, lost wages or medical expenses), physical (for instance, as a result of an assault by a person the practitioner was supposed to have been supervising), or emotional (for example, depression that may result from a practitioner’s sexual contact with a client).

As in criminal trials, defendants in civil lawsuits are presumed to be innocent until proved otherwise. In ordinary civil suits, defendants will be found liable for their actions based on the standard of preponderance of the evidence, as opposed to the stricter standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt used in criminal trials. In some civil cases – for example, those involving contract disputes – the court may expect clear and convincing evidence, a standard of proof that is greater than preponderance of the evidence but less than for beyond a reasonable doubt.

In general, malpractice occurs when there is evidence for the four criteria found in Table 8.  

Six broad categories of cases involve malpractice, ethical misconduct, or unprofessional behavior:

• confidentiality and privacy
• delivery of services and boundary violations
• supervision of clients and staff
• consultation, referral, and records
• deception and fraud
• termination of service

Confidentiality and Privacy

Earlier I discussed ethical dilemmas related to confidentiality. In those cases, practitioners had to decide how to handle the disclosure of confidential information to protect third parties or clients from harm, to protect or benefit clients in response to a court order, and to satisfy requests from parents or guardians concerning minor children. My discussion focused on the process of ethical decision making rather than the possibility of ethical misconduct in the form of inappropriate disclosure of confidential information.

Mental health practitioners can be charged with misconduct if they violate clients’ right to confidentiality. Codes of ethics in the mental health professions include many specific standards pertaining to confidentiality (Table 9):

Mental health practitioners should acquaint themselves with relevant federal and state statutes and regulations, agency policies, and practice principles related to each of these situations.  Practitioners should pay particular attention to federal guidelines related to the confidentiality of drug and alcohol treatment, school records, and electronically stored and transmitted communication.  Key guidelines pertain to the release of confidential information pertaining to alcohol and substance abuse treatment (42 C.F.R. 2-1 ff., "Confidentiality of Alcohol and Drug Abuse Patient Records").  These regulations broadly protect the confidentiality of substance abuse program records -- with respect to the identity, diagnosis, prognosis, or treatment of any client -- maintained in connection with the performance of any program or activity relating to substance abuse education, prevention, training, treatment, rehabilitation, or research that is conducted, regulated, or directly or indirectly assisted by any federal department or agency.  Disclosures are permitted (1) with the written informed consent of the client, (2) to medical personnel in emergencies, (3) for research, evaluation, and audits, and (4) by court order for good cause.

Practitioners employed in educational settings should be very familiar with FERPA regulations.  The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (also known as the Buckley/Pell Amendment, 20 U.S.C. §1232g) specifies the conditions for student and parent access to educational records; the procedures for challenging and correcting inaccurate educational records; and requirements for the release of educational records or identifying information to other individuals, agencies, or organizations.  The act covers educational institutions and agencies, public or private, which receive federal funds.  It spells out instances when educational records may be released without written consent of a parent or guardian, for example, release to school officials and teachers who have a legitimate educational interest; for financial aid, audit, and research purposes; and in emergencies if disclosure of information in the record is necessary to protect the health or safety of students or other persons.

Practitioners must also be very familiar with provisions in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).  In 1996 Congress enacted HIPAA in response to increasing costs associated with transmitting health records lacking standardized formatting across providers, institutions, localities, and states.  HIPAA has three components: (1) privacy standards for the use and disclosure of individually identifiable private health information; (2) transaction standards for the electronic exchange of health information; and (3) security standards to protect the creation and maintenance of private health information.  The various HIPAA rules standardize the format of electronically transmitted records; secure the electronic transaction and storage of individually identifiable health information; limit the use and release of individually identifiable information; increase client control of use and disclosure of private health information; increase clients' access to their own records; establish legal accountability and penalties for unauthorized use and disclosure and violation of transaction and security standards; and identify public health and welfare needs that permit use and disclosure of individually identifiable health information without client authorization.

A particularly important confidentiality issue pertains to mental health professionals’ duty to protect third parties from harm inflicted by clients.  The famous Tarasoff case and various other “duty to protect” cases that have been litigated since then have helped to clarify the delicate balance between practitioners’ obligation to respect clients’ right to confidentiality and their simultaneous duty to protect third parties from harm. Although some court decisions in these cases are contradictory and inconsistent with one another, in general four conditions should be met to justify disclosure of confidential information to protect third parties from harm and these can be seen in Table 10.

It is very important for mental health clinicians to inform clients at the beginning of their relationship about the limits of confidentiality.  Clients have the right to know what information they share with a counselor might have to be disclosed to others against clients’ wishes (for example, evidence of child abuse or neglect, or of a client’s threat to harm a third party).

Clinicians who are involved in group treatment, or who provide counseling services to couples and families, must be particularly aware of confidentiality issues. For example, clinicians disagree about the extent to which couples and family members have a right to expect that information they share in therapy will not be disclosed to others. Although clinicians can encourage others involved in treatment to respect a particular individual’s wish for privacy, there is considerable debate about the limits of confidentiality in these contexts. Some practitioners believe, for example, that those involved in couples or family counseling should not have the right to convey secrets to the practitioner that will not be shared with others involved in the treatment (for example, family members, spouse, or partner). Other practitioners, however, believe that secrets can be appropriate and in some cases can actually enhance the effectiveness of treatment (for example, when the disclosure of a man’s extramarital affair would only undermine the substantial progress being made by him and his wife). At a minimum, mental health professionals should inform clients of their obligation to respect the confidentiality of information shared by others in family, couples, or group counseling and of the practitioners’ or agencies’ poli­cies concerning the handling of confidential information that participants share with social workers.  For example, the NASW Code of Ethics (2017) states:

When social workers provide counseling to families, couples, or groups, social workers should seek agreement among the parties involved con­cerning each individual’s right to confidentiality and obligation to preserve the confidentiality of information shared by others. This agreement should include consideration of whether confidential information may be exchanged in person or electronically, among clients or with others outside of formal counseling sessions. Social workers should inform participants in family, couples, or group counseling that social workers cannot guarantee that all participants will honor such agreements. (standard 1.07[f])

Social workers should inform clients involved in family, couples, marital, or group counseling of the social worker’s, employer’s, and agency’s pol­icy concerning the social worker’s disclosure of confidential information among the parties involved in the counseling. (standard 1.07[g])

Many confidentiality problems occur when practitioners are simply absentminded, careless, or sloppy. Examples include practitioners who talk about clients in agency waiting rooms, elevators, hallways, or restaurants while in the presence of others; leave confidential documents on top of their desks or in a photocopy machine such that others can see them; do not dispose of confidential information properly; and so on. In these cases the practitioners involved mean no harm. They simply make mistakes, ones that may be costly.

Mental health professionals can take a number of steps to prevent these mistakes or at least minimize the likelihood that they will occur. Practitioners should be sure to train all agency staff members, including all professional staff and nonprofessional staff (for example, secretaries, clerical workers, custodians, cooks) concerning the concept of confidentiality, the need to protect confidentiality, and common ways that confidentiality can be violated. Training should cover the need to protect confidential information contained in written records and documents from inappropriate access by parties outside the agency (for example, other human service professionals, insurance companies, clients’ family members, and guardians) and by other staff members within the agency who have no need to know the confidential information. All agencies should have clear policies governing access to confidential information by third parties and clients themselves.

Staff should also be trained about inappropriate release of confidential information through verbal communication. Practitioners and other staff members in social service agencies need to be careful about what they say in hallways and waiting rooms, on elevators, in restaurants and other public facilities, on answering machine messages, and over the telephone to other social service professionals, clients’ family members and friends, and representatives of the news media.

In addition, practitioners should prepare clear written explanations of their agency’s confidentiality guidelines. These should be shared with every client (many agencies ask clients to sign a copy acknowledging that the guide­lines were shared with them and that they understand the guidelines).

To understand the limits of privacy and confidentiality practitioners must be familiar with the concept of privileged communication. The right of privileged communication ordinarily means that a professional cannot disclose confidential information during legal proceedings without the client’s consent or a court order. Among professionals, the attorney-client relationship was the first to be granted the right of privileged communication. Over time other groups of professionals, such as social workers, physicians, psychiatrists, psychologists, counselors, and clergy, sought legislation to provide them with this right.

Whereas confidentiality refers to the professional norm that information shared by or pertaining to clients should not be shared with third parties, the concept of privilege refers specifically to the disclosure of confidential information in legal proceedings. Many states and the federal courts now grant mental health counselors’ clients the right of privileged communication, which means that practitioners cannot disclose privileged information in court without clients’ consent. Practitioners must understand, however, that privileged communi­cation statutes do not guarantee that they will never be required to disclose information without clients’ consent. In fact, despite a privileged communication statute, a court of law could formally order a clinician to reveal this information if the judge believed that it was essential to a case being tried. Judges use widely embraced legal standards to decide whether they should order the disclosure of privileged information.

Delivery of Services and Boundary Violations

A substantial portion of claims filed against mental health professionals allege some kind of misconduct related to the delivery of services. These services take various forms – such as individual psychotherapy, family treatment and couples coun­seling, casework, group counseling, program administration, and research – and are delivered in a wide variety of settings, including public and private human service agencies.

Claims alleging improper delivery of services raise various issues, in­cluding problems with informed consent procedures, client assessment and intervention, undue influence, suicide, civil commitment proceedings, pro­tective services, defamation of character, and boundary violations (including sexual contact with clients).

The concept of informed consent has always been prominent in the mental health professions. Consistent with practitioners’ long-standing embrace of the principle of client self-determination, informed consent procedures require clinicians to obtain clients’ permission before releasing confidential information to third parties; allowing clients to be photographed, videotaped, or audiotaped by the media; permitting clients to participate as subjects in a research project; and so on.

State and local jurisdictions have different interpretations and applications of informed consent standards. Nonetheless, agreement is considerable about what constitutes valid consent by clients in light of prevailing legislation and case law. In general, for consent to be considered valid six standards must be met (Table 11):

Allegations of improper client assessment and intervention concern a wide range of activities. These claims of malpractice or misconduct often allege that the clinician assessed a client’s needs or provided services in a way that departed from the profession’s standard of care. That is, the practitioner failed to assess properly, failed to provide a needed service, or provided a service in a way that was inconsistent with professional standards and caused some kind of harm. Practitioners may neglect to ask important questions during an assessment, may fail to document important assessment information, or may use some treatment technique that is unorthodox or for which they do not have proper training.

It is important to note that courts do not expect perfection in practitioners’ assessments and service delivery. Judges recognize the inexact nature of these phenomena. What they do expect, however, is conformity with the standard of care in the practitioner’s profession with regard to assessment and service delivery. Although a client may have been harmed somehow, the practitioner may have acted reasonably and in a way that is widely accepted in the profession. An error in judgment is not by itself negligent.

Some claims related to assessment and service delivery involve suicide. For example, a client who failed in an attempt to commit suicide and was injured in the process, or family members of someone who committed suicide, may allege that a clinician did not properly assess the suicide risk or properly respond to or manage a client’s suicidal ideation and tendencies.

Some claims include allegations that practitioners used unconventional or nontraditional intervention techniques that proved harmful.  According to the NASW Code of Ethics, for example, “When generally recognized standards do not exist with respect to an emerging area of practice, social workers should exercise careful judgment and take responsible steps (including appropriate education, research, training, consultation, and supervision) to ensure the competence of their work and to protect clients from harm” (standard 1.04[c]).

Another problem area involves advice giving. Practitioners must be careful to not give clients advice outside their areas of training and expertise. For example, a marriage and family therapist or psychologist who gives a client advice about the proper use of medication that a psychiatrist has prescribed could be charged with practicing medicine without a license.

Some claims allege that mental health professionals used what is known as undue influence in their relationships with clients. Undue influence occurs when practitioners use their authority improperly to pressure, persuade, or sway a client to engage in an activity that may not be in the client’s best interest or that may pose a conflict of interest. Examples include convincing a dying client to include the counselor in her will and becoming involved with a client in a profitable business.

Practitioners must also be aware of liability, negligence, and misconduct claims that can arise in relation to protective services, that is, efforts to protect abused and neglected children, elderly, and other vulnerable populations. Every state has a statute obligating mandated reporters, including mental health professionals, to notify local protective service officials when they suspect abuse or neglect of a child. Many states have similar statutes concerned with the elderly and people with disabilities.

Practitioners need to prevent allegations that they failed to report suspected abuse or neglect; knowingly made false accusations of abuse and neglect (“bad faith” reporting); inadequately protected a child who was apparently abused or neglected (for example, by failing to investigate a complaint swiftly and thoroughly, failing to place an abused or neglected child in foster care, or returning an at-risk child to dangerous guardians); violated parental rights (for example, by conducting unnecessarily intrusive investigations); or placed children in dangerous or inadequate foster homes. Comparable issues can arise related to vulnerable elderly or people with disabilities. 

Sadly, one of the most common allegations of misconduct against practitioners involves sexual abuse of clients. Typically these cases involve mental health practitioners who are somehow impaired in their personal lives and who knowingly exploit clients.

Supervision of Staff

Many mental health professionals supervise staff members. A clinical di­rector in a community mental health center may supervise caseworkers and the director of a battered women’s shelter may supervise counselors. Typically, supervisors provide case supervision and consultation, evaluate workers’ performance, and offer training. Because of their oversight responsibilities, supervisors can be named in ethics complaints and lawsuits involving mistakes or unethical conduct engaged in by the people who work under them. These claims usually cite the legal concept of respondeat superior, which means ‘let the master respond’, and the doctrine of vicarious liability. That is, supervisors may be found liable for actions or inactions in which they were involved only vicariously, or indirectly. According to respondeat superior and vicarious liability, supervisors are responsible for the actions or inactions of the people they supervise and over which the supervisors had some degree of control. Of course, the staff member who made the mistake that led to the claim against the supervisor can also be found liable.

Supervisors should be concerned about several specific issues, including supervisors’ failure to provide information necessary for supervisees to obtain clients’ consent; identify and respond to supervisees’ errors in all phases of client contact, such as the inappropriate disclosure of confidential information; protect third parties; detect or stop a negligent treatment plan or treatment carried out longer than necessary; determine that a specialist is needed for treatment of a particular client; meet regularly with the supervisee; review and approve the supervisee’s records, decisions, and actions; and provide adequate coverage in the supervisee’s absence. Supervisors should comply with the relevant standards in their professions concerning the knowledge and skills needed to provide competent supervision, the need for clear and appropriate boundaries in relationships with supervisees, and evaluation of supervisees.

Clinicians in private practice face special issues. Independent practi­tioners do not always have easy access to regular supervision or consultation. It is important for independent practitioners to contract for supervision with a colleague or participate in peer consultation groups. Otherwise, solo private practitioners may be vulnerable to allegations that they failed to obtain proper supervision or consultation, should some question be raised about the quality of their work.

Mental health professionals should be careful to document the nature of the supervision they have provided. They should have regularly scheduled appointments with supervisees, request detailed information about the cases or other work they are supervising, and occasionally observe their supervisees’ work, if possible. Supervisors should be careful not to sign off on insurance or other forms for cases they have not supervised.

Consultation, Referral, and Records

Mental health professionals often need to or should obtain consultation from colleagues, including members of their own and other professions, who have special expertise. Clinicians may encounter a case in which they need consultation about a client’s unique problem, such as an eating disorder or psychotic symptoms. If the client’s presenting problem is outside the practitioner’s expertise, the clinician should seek consultation or make an appropriate referral.    

Practitioners can be vulnerable to ethics complaints and malpractice allegations if they fail to seek consultation when it is warranted. In addition, practitioners can be vulnerable if they do not refer a client to a specialist for an assessment, evaluation, or treatment. For instance, if a client who is being treated for symptoms of depression complains to her clinician that she has chronic headaches, the clinician would be wise to refer the client to a physician who can rule out any organic problem, such as a brain tumor.  Some clinicians routinely encourage all clients to have a physical as part of their treatment.

Practitioners can also encounter ethics complaints or lawsuits when they fail to consult an organization for advice. For example, this could happen to a psychotherapist who suspects that a particular child has been abused but decides not to consult with or report to the local child welfare authorities. This may occur when clinicians believe they are better off handling the case themselves, they do not have confidence in the child protection agency staff, and they do not want to undermine their therapeutic relationship with their clients. The result may be that the clinician will be cited or sued for failing to consult with a specialist (in this case, the child welfare agency).

Clinicians must pay close attention to the procedures they use when they refer clients to or consult with another practitioner. They have a responsi­bility to refer clients to colleagues with strong reputations and to practitioners with appropriate expertise and credentials. Otherwise, the practitioner may be cited for negligent referral.

Mental health professionals who consult with or refer clients to colleagues should provide careful documentation of the contact in the case record. It is extremely important for practitioners to be able to demonstrate the assistance they received in cases, in the event that a client or some other party raises questions concerning the appropriateness of the practitioners’ actions.

The same advice applies to record keeping in general. Careful and dili­gent recording enhances the quality of service provided to clients. Thorough records identify, describe, and assess clients’ situations; define the purpose of service; document service goals, plans, activities, and progress; and evaluate the effectiveness of service. Recording also helps to maintain the continuity of care. Carefully recorded notes help practitioners recall relevant detail from session to session and can enhance coordination of service and supervision among staff members within an agency. Recording also helps to ensure quality care if a client’s primary clinician becomes unavailable because of illness, vacation, or departure from the agency.

Deception and Fraud

The vast majority of mental health professionals are honest in their dealings with staff, other social service agencies, insurance companies, and so on. Unfortunately, however, a relatively small number of practitioners engage in some form of deception and fraud in their dealings with these parties.

Mental health practitioners may engage in deception and fraud for various reasons and with different motives. Some practitioners – a small percentage, fortunately – are simply dishonest and attempt to take advantage of others for reasons of greed, malice, self-protection, or self-satisfaction. Practitioners who become sexually involved with clients, extort money from clients, and bill clients’ insurance companies for services that were never rendered are examples.

Practitioners who market or advertise their services also need to be careful to avoid deception and fraud. Practitioners must be sure to provide fair and accurate descriptions of their services, expertise, and credentials and to avoid exaggerated claims of effectiveness.  Practitioners must also avoid deception and fraud when applying for liability insurance, employment, a license, or some other form of certification. Administrators must be careful not to provide false accounts of grant or budget expenditures, or personnel evaluations. In addition, practitioners must not alter or falsify case records to create the impression that they provided services or supervision that were never actually provided. If a practitioner finds that accurate details were inadvertently omitted from a record, the information can be added, but the record should clearly reflect that the entry was made subsequently. The practitioner should sign and date the addition to show that it was a correction.

Practitioners also must be careful to avoid deception and fraud when they write letters of reference for staff members or when they submit letters to employers or other parties, such as insurers or government agencies, on clients’ behalf. On occasion practitioners have exaggerated staff members’ skills (or problems), or embellished their descriptions of clients’ disabilities, in order to be helpful (or harmful). Practitioners incur considerable risk if they knowingly misrepresent staff members’ or clients’ qualities. Practitioners should issue only statements about colleagues and clients that they know to be true or have good reason to believe are true.

Termination of Service

In addition to ethical problems related to confidentiality, the initiation and delivery of services, supervision, consultation, referral, and deception and fraud, mental health professionals need to be concerned about the ways in which they terminate services. Improper or unethical termination of services might occur when a clinician leaves an agency or a community suddenly without adequately preparing a client for the termination or without referring a client to a new service provider. In other instances, a clinician might terminate services abruptly to a client in dire need of assistance because the client is unable to pay for the care. Practitioners can also encounter problems when they are not available to clients or do not properly instruct them about how to handle emergencies that may arise.

Many ethical problems related to termination of services involve the con­cept of abandonment. Abandonment is a legal concept that refers to instances in which a professional is not available to a client when needed. Once mental health practitioners begin to provide service to a client, they incur a legal responsibility to continue that service or to properly refer a client to another competent service provider. Of course, practitioners are not obligated to serve every individual who requests assistance. A particular practitioner might not have room to accept a new referral or may lack the special expertise that a particular client’s case may require.

Nonetheless, once a practitioner begins service, it cannot be terminated abruptly. Rather, practitioners are obligated to conform to their profession’s standard of care regarding termination of service and referral to other providers in the event the client is still in need.

A more common problem occurs when clients’ services are terminated prematurely, before termination is clinically warranted. This may occur for several reasons. Clients may request termination of service, perhaps because of the expense or inconvenience involved. In these cases, termination of service may be against the advice of the clinician involved in the client’s care. For example, clients in residential and nonresidential substance abuse treatment programs may decide that they do not want to continue receiving services. They may leave residential programs against professional advice or may decide not to return for outpatient services.

In other instances, services may be terminated at the clinician’s request or initiative, for instance, when practitioners believe that a client is not making sufficient progress to warrant further treatment or is not able to pay for services. In some cases, program administrators in a residential program may want to terminate a client whose insurance benefits have run out or in order to make a bed available for a client who will generate a higher reimbursement rate because of his or her particular insurance coverage. In a number of cases, practitioners terminate services when they find clients to be uncooperative or too difficult to handle. Practitioners may also terminate services prematurely because of poor clinical judgment; that is, practitioners may believe that clients have made more (or less) progress than they have in fact made.

Mental health professionals face a unique ethical challenge if they signed a "non-compete" agreement at the time of agency employment.  Some employers require new employees to agree to not "compete" with the employer in the event the employee leaves the agency for a new employment setting (including independent or private practice).  Ordinarily these agreements prohibit clinicians from serving current clients in their new employment setting.  In my view, these agreements are unethical because they interfere with clients' right to decide from whom they want to receive clinical services, which may entail following the clinician to her or his new employment setting.  Of course, clinicians should never engage in any form of undue influence to convince clients to follow them to a new employment setting.  Rather, clinicians should acquaint clients with all of their options and discuss the potential advantages and disadvantages of each.

Premature termination of services can result in ethics complaints and lawsuits alleging that, as a result, clients were harmed or injured, or injured some third party because of their continuing disability. A client who attempts to commit suicide following premature termination from a psychiatric hospital may allege that the premature termination was the direct cause of the attempt. Family members who are physically injured by a client who was discharged prematurely from a substance abuse treatment program may claim that their injuries are the direct result of poor clinical judgment.

On occasion services must be terminated earlier than a clinician or client would prefer for reasons that are quite legitimate. This may occur because a client in fact does not make reasonable progress or is uncooperative, or because the practitioner moves out of town or finds that she or he does not have the particular skills or expertise needed to be helpful to the client. When this occurs, practitioners must be careful to terminate services to clients properly.

Adequate follow-through should include providing clients as much advance warning as possible, along with the names of several other professionals they might approach for help. Practitioners should also follow up with clients who have been terminated to increase the likelihood that they receive whatever services they may need.

Practitioners can also face ethics complaints or lawsuits if they do not provide clients with adequate instructions for times when the practitioners are not available as a result of vacations, illness, or emergencies. Practitioners should provide clients with clear and detailed information, verbally and in writing, about what they ought to do in these situations, such as whom to call, where to seek help, and so on.

Practitioners who expect to be unavailable for a period of time – perhaps because of vacation or medical care – should be especially careful to arrange for competent coverage. The colleagues who are to provide the coverage should be given sufficient information about the clients to enable them to provide adequate care should the need arise. Of course, practitioners should obtain clients’ consent to the release of this information about their cases and should disclose the least amount of information necessary to meet the clients’ needs.

The Impaired Mental Health Practitioner

As I observed earlier, many ethics complaints and lawsuits result from genuine mistakes made by mental health practitioners who are otherwise competent. In other instances, ethics complaints and lawsuits follow competent practitioners’ well-meaning attempts to make the right ethical judgment, for example, with respect to disclosing confidential information about a client to protect a third party. In many cases, however, ethics complaints and lawsuits are filed because of mistakes, judgment errors, or misconduct engaged in by practitioners who are, in some way, impaired.   Impairment involves problems in a clinician’s functioning that is reflected in an inability and/or unwillingness to follow professional standards; an inability or unwillingness to acquire professional skills in order to reach an acceptable level of competency; and an inability or unwillingness to control personal stress and emotional problems that interfere with professional functioning.

The seriousness of impairment among practitioners and the forms it takes vary. Impairment may involve failure to provide competent care or violation of the profession’s ethical standards. It may also take such forms as providing flawed or inferior psychotherapy to a client, sexual involvement with a client, or failure to carry out professional duties as a result of substance abuse or mental illness.

Impairment among professionals has various causes. Stress related to employ­ment, illness or death of family members, marital or relationship problems, financial problems, midlife crises, personal physical or mental illness, legal problems, and substance abuse may lead to impairment. Stress induced by professional education and training can also lead to im­pairment, stemming from the close clinical supervision and scrutiny students receive, the disruption in students’ personal lives caused by the demands of schoolwork and field placements, and the pressures of students’ academic programs.

Clinicians encounter special sources of stress that may lead to impairment because their therapeutic role often extends into the non-work areas of their lives (such as relationships with family members and friends) and because of the lack of reciprocity in relationships with clients (therapists are “always giving”), the often slow and erratic nature of therapeutic progress, and the triggering of therapists’ own issues by therapeutic work with clients.

Ethically, practitioners should take steps to address their impairment.  Practitioners should not allow their own personal problems, psychosocial distress, legal problems, substance abuse, or mental health difficulties to interfere with their professional judgment and performance or to jeopardize the best interests of people for whom they have a professional responsibility.  As mentioned earlier, practitioners whose personal problems, psychosocial distress, legal problems, substance abuse, or mental health difficulties interfere with their professional judgment and performance should immediately seek consultation and take appropriate remedial action by seeking professional help, making adjustments in workload, terminating practice, or taking any other steps necessary to protect clients and others.

Unfortunately, many practitioners are reluctant to seek help for personal prob­lems. Also, many practitioners are reluctant to confront colleagues about their impairment. Practitioners may be hesitant to acknowledge impairment within the profession because they fear how colleagues would react to confrontation and how this might affect future collegial relationships.

Some mental health practitioners may find it difficult to seek help for their own problems because they believe that they have infinite power and invulnerability, that they should be able to work out their problems themselves, an acceptable therapist is not available, it is more appropriate for them to seek help from family members or friends, confidential information might be disclosed, proper treatment would require too much effort and cost, they have a spouse who is unwilling to participate in treatment, and therapy would not be effective. 

It is important for practitioners to design ways to prevent impairment and respond to impaired colleagues. They must be knowledgeable about the indicators and causes of impairment so that they can recognize problems that colleagues may be experiencing. Practitioners must also be willing to confront impaired colleagues constructively, offer assistance and consultation, and, if necessary as a last resort, refer the colleague to a supervisor or local regulatory or disciplinary body (such as a professional organization or local licensing or regulatory body).  Practitioners who have direct knowledge of a colleague's impairment that is due to personal problems, psychosocial distress, substance abuse, or mental health difficulties and that interferes with practice effectiveness should consult with that colleague when feasible and assist the colleague in taking remedial action.  Practitioners who believe that a colleague's impairment interferes with practice effectiveness and that the colleague has not taken adequate steps to address the impairment should take action through appropriate channels established by employers, agencies, licensing and regulatory bodies, and other professional organizations. 

Although some cases of impairment must be dealt with through formal ad­judication and disciplinary procedures, many cases can be handled primarily by arranging therapeutic or rehabilitative services for distressed practitioners. For example, professional associations can enter into agreements with local employee assistance programs, to which impaired members can be referred.

Conducting an Ethics Audit

One of the most effective ways to prevent ethics complaints and ethics-related lawsuits is to conduct what I refer to as an ethics audit.  An ethics audit provides practitioners with a practical framework for examining and critiquing the ways in which they address a wide range of ethical issues.  More specifically, an ethics audit provides practitioners with opportunities as outline in Table 12.

Conducting an ethics audit involves several key steps and these are outlined in Table 13.

In this section I discussed the ways in which some mental health practitioners – clearly a minority in the field – engage in malpractice or ethical misconduct. I reviewed various mechanisms available for sanctioning and disciplining practitioners found in violation of ethical standards and discussed the problem of impaired practitioners.  I also discussed how practitioners can conduct an ethics audit to assess the adequacy of their ethics-related policies, practices, and procedures.

I want to thank you for participating in this continuing education course sponsored by BehavioralHealthCE.  I hope you have found it useful.  

I wish you well.