Ethical Challenges for Mental Health Professionals

A practical, hands-on guide to understanding and resolving common ethical issues that arise in mental health practice.
This book, intended for a broad audience of professionals, is a practical, handy guide to ethical decision-making in one’s daily work. Each chapter outlines key ethical issues that arise in mental health practice, cites relevant ethics code principles and standards, and illustrates the dilemmas with vignettes drawn from real life, followed by questions and answers to promote critical thinking.
Common ethical challenges described by the authors include maintaining confidentiality, practicing within one’s area of competence, and providing informed consent. Chapters cover work with special populations--including children, older adults, and individuals struggling with their gender identity--as well as work in specialized areas such as assessment and forensic settings. This book provides readers with the framework they need to think through ethical challenges flexibly and make decisions that benefit and protect their clients and themselves.

Jack P. Haynes, PhD, is a licensed psychologist in private practice in Michigan. He has served as chair of the American Psychological Association Ethics Committee. He also served for eight years on the Michigan Licensing Board for Psychology, including as chair. He is past president of the Michigan Psychological Association and was president of a statewide forensic psychology association. He has been Director of Research, Training, and Clinical Services for a family court. Dr. Haynes has performed hundreds of court ordered child custody and parenting time evaluations as well as many other evaluations, both civil and criminal, adult and juvenile.
James Windell, MA is a limited license psychologist, college instructor, and author. As a court psychologist, he specialized in work with families and children. Since 1991, he has published more than 40 books in the areas of parenting, divorce, postpartum depression, healing for widows, and criminal justice. He has been a weekly newspaper columnist, the editor of The Michigan Psychologist for the past 20 years, and he has taught criminal justice courses at Wayne State University and Oakland University for 25 years.