A well-known and standard ethics text offers the following scenario: A clinical social worker at a community mental health center has a caseload that includes clients who have been diagnosed with symptoms of schizophrenia and affective disorders. The social worker’s co-worker discovers that the social worker has been inflating the number of overtime hours she has worked and the amount of her reimbursable travel expenses. The co-worker is aware that Ms. Holmes has been having some financial problems. The scenario presented above asks the reader to explore the obigations, if any, that the co-wor ..read more

A story from today’s headlines reveals that a 16-year-old student has been banned by his Ohio school district from wearing a shirt with the insignia of a fish and the slogan “Jesus is Not a Homophobe.” The student’s explanation for wearing the shirt is quite simple: “I’ve been bullied and called names and I wanted to wear this shirt to promote respect for all students, gay or straight.” The student has sued to reverse the school district’s ruling. The legal aspects of this troubling decision are fairly easily analyzed by reference to this website’s discussion of the duty to ..read more

On Monday, June 6, at 6 pm Pacific time I will be presenting a Webinar on the future of Roe v. Wade. I will talk about the fundamental right of privacy and the protections offered by the 14th Amendment. I would love to have your comments and questions about this subject! Please send me an email at aisrael@ewu.edu. I will have my presentation posted to this blog for viewership. The post What is the future of Roe v. Wade? appeared first on Mental Health Law Blog ..read more

The post Identifying the Primary Client in Mental Health: Conflicts of Interest appeared first on Mental Health Law Blog ..read more

I am frequently asked by students why I recommend a law-based system for decision makin in the mental health professions, including social work, psychology and counseling. The answer, without oversimplifying it, is that professional codes of ethics impart very limited assistance to professionals and students who face important practice decisions every day in their professional lives. As a primary example of the NASW Code of Ethics’ failure to render adequate assistance, let’s start with the statement made in the Code’s preamble, which warns us that only some of the standards contained in the c ..read more

Much has been written in recent months about the California law enacted to place a ban on the use of “conversion therapy” as a pseudo-treatment to “change” the sexual orientation of gay people. The basis of the California law is the simple reality—one accepted by mainstream mental health professionals—that conversion therapy not only fails to work but that it is also denies the fundamental condition of sexual orientation, one that is established early in life and represents a normal part of human existence. The California law has been struck down—at least for now—by a court that has claimed th ..read more

This dilemma is inspired by a recent episode of the wonderful dramatic show “In Plain Sight”: In the show, divorcing parents with two school-aged children each accuse the other of abusing and neglecting their children. The husband, who is a physician, has been shown to have been prescribing excessive quantities of oxycodone, a painkiller, to his wife. He then proceeds to inform a social worker that his wife’s abuse of the drug constitutes neglect of the children. Apart from the hypocricy of the physician’s attempt to hold his own abuse of his prescription practices against his wife, does the w ..read more

Consider this scenario: you are a direct service provider offering mental health counseling to individuals and families. A young woman and her mother visit your office seeking assistance with their personal relationship. You elect to assess them together during their first visit. Each asserts that she has felt depressed in recent weeks and attributes her sad feelings to the fact that the young woman, who is 30 years old, has had to move in with her mother, 52, after a failed marriage. In talking to mother and daughter together, you reach the clinical conclusion that each may be suffering from ..read more

It is truly remarkable how many standard ethics textbooks present fictional factual scenarios in which the reader is urged to read each scenario and make a decision about whether the facts are enough to warrant a report to a child protective service organization. As it has been noted before, the duty to report is strictly a legal consideration which arises from an analysis of whether the facts as presented set forth a reasonable suspicion that a child has been/is in danger of being abused or neglected. Here’s yet another example of a factual scenario, a version of which appeared in a ..read more