Ethics

Hello everyone. I hope the CCE's are going well.

I think this article was very good. I was extremely surprised at some of the statistics (especially the one individual who reported having sexual interactions with patients 10 or more times) regarding sexual contact and behavior with clients. I was also interesting to see that the only school of thought to have investigated these issues was the Psychoanalytic school. Clearly more research needs to be done in this area, concidering this article was published in 1986. This article made me think a lot about how I would handle this issue if it came up. I also think that in our program we have had more exposure to this issue than most, given that it has been addressed in both of our ethics classes. I would be very interested to see some new statistics on this and see if other schools of thought have investigated this issue.

Answers to Pope article:
1. D
2. B
3. D
4. A
5. C
6. B
7. A
8. B
9. A
10. B

After reading the Anfang and Applebaum aticle, I relly thought about how I would deal wtih a vilent patient. I thoguht about how i was trained to address in teh informed consent that I would have to break confidentiality, if the client was suicidal or threatened violence against anothe person. I never really questioned how this would effect the relationship wtih a particular client. I know myself that I always take a threat of violence seriously, and taks time to explore this with the client before jumping to any decisions. This article brought forth some extreme examples of how Tarasoff has been extended to unusual circumstances, however i still think this ruling is to our advantage. It gives us place to look if we are unsure of what to do when this situation arises.

Hello everyone,
For some reason i just noticed that I only have questions 7 & 8 from teh article. Here are teh answers to those questions.

7. D
8. C

Answers to Monahan (1993)
1. D
2. A
3. B
4. C
5. A
6. B
7. B
8. B



Reaction to Monahan:
I thought this article was very informative and helpful. It gives a great starting point learning how to manage risk. As I read this I thought about my practicum, where I am currently on the aggresive males unit. Here there is a patient, due to his unpredicatale aggresiveness has been put on constant one to one. While he is supposed to be under constatn supervision he still manages to hit another about every other week. I was wondering after reading this article, If the family ever decided to press charges where would the responsibility lie? Would it be the psychiatrist, the psychologist or the nursing staff? Clearly all of these people are an integral part of the aggressive patients treatment.

Comment on readings:
I really appreciated the article on informed consent, I think it gave a clear and understandable idea of what informed consent should and should not be. I strongly feel that as a field we need to move toward more structured modes of intervention and should be held to high standard of care. Through good informed consent which tells the client about their options, why you are doing what you are doing, and what they can expect while you are doing it psychology as a field becomes more credible and accepted. In addition to giving the field credibility giving the client choices about the most supported therapy makes them feel as though they are in control and making an informed decision.
At first glance I thought the Bergin article was really going to upset me. I come form the stance that other than my obligation to the professional ethics code I can not make a judgment on someone else's values or value system. It is my job to treat this person and help them to be able to function better in their life regardless of what my personal values are. As I read the article I fluctuated in what my thoughts were, I personally know that I can not work with an individual whose main goal is to become a more virtuous person, I am not here to make that judgment. I think that if this is the main goal for an individual a pastoral counselor may be better equipped to handle this issue. Granted there may be some other pathology that could be treated, but I am not willing to have a debate over values with my client.

Answers to questions:
Bergin (1991)
1.c
2.b
3.b
4.d
5.a
6.d
7.b
8.b
9.b
10.d

Beahrs et al. (2001)
1.b
2.c
3.a
4.a