Professional Ethical Issues

Paper Summary:

The paper outlines three vignettes which underscore the ethical choices mental health care professionals are required to make in the sensitive areas of disclosure and personal relationships. The paper briefly describes each situation, the ethical issues involved, what the American Psychological Association's Code of Conduct stipulates, what an experienced professional might do in such a situation and what consequences most likely will result from the eventual decision undertaken by the therapist. The paper strongly maintains that ethical conduct is as important as technical competence when it comes to protecting and serving clients.

From the Paper:

"The first vignette up for discussion involves a young aspiring psychologist instructing in basic psychology at a local community college. In this particular instance, the teacher discovers the very first day of class that two of the students are patients with whom the instructor interacts on a regular basis at a local clinic. Naturally, this delicate situation raises the issue of what the instructor should do."
"Without question, the problem here is that a psychologist treating two individuals now finds him or herself instructing those individuals in a classroom setting with others present. Consequently, the danger is that information which might be injurious to the patients could conceivably come out - most likely by way of allusion - during the course of classroom conversations; the potential issues are therefore ones of privacy and also of not upsetting fragile psyches that are trying to cope with mental illnesses while keeping the rest of their lives in balance."

Sample of Sources Used:

• American Psychological Association. (2006). Ethical principles of psychologists and code of conduct. APA Online: Ethics. Retrieved October 11, 2006, from <http://www.apa.org/ethics/code2002.html#principle_a>

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