In most mental health professions, confidentiality is probably the most important ethical principle in psychology, aside from nonmalfeasance. However, confidentiality is embedded in the Western values of individuality and autonomy. This creates a moral and ethical dilemma for clinicians working with clients from other cultures. This article presents 3 cases to highlight the conflict that many clinicians are likely to face with regard to confidentiality when working with clients from South Asia and similar cultures. The importance of understanding how cultural (...) values may contradict professional ethics and some ways in which the clinician can address them are also discussed. (shrink)

This article defines the nature of paternalistic interventions in psychotherapy and discusses reasons why the client's right to consent to treatment is important. We describe a reasoning process developed by Culver and Gert (1982) that can be used to determine when paternalistic actions are and are not ethically justifiable in mental health practice. We demonstrate how this procedure may be applied to psychotherapy by using a number of case illustrations.

Two decades of literature and discussion on the topic of therapist-client sexual relationships have revealed much about the nature and consequences of these relationships and have produced an explicit prohibition against such relationships in American Psychological Association (APA) Ethical Principle 6a. This article reviews the literature as it relates to the ethically gray area of sex with former clients. The relative lack of an empirical basis for extending the prohibition of Principle 6a to posttermination relationships is noted. This article describes (...) concepts from three theoretical perspectives about psychotherapy that support an extension of the prohibition to sexual relationships with ex-clients. (shrink)