Family Therapists' Ethical Decision‐making Processes in Two Duty‐to‐warn Situations

Abstract

This quantitative study investigated the ethical decision-making process of 177 Missouri members of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy using two in-session duty-to-warn scenarios of child abuse and HIV transmission. The components of the critical-evaluative level of ethical decision making include the lower-level decision components of personal/therapeutic response, professional ethics, and legal considerations/laws of the State, and the components of the higher-level decision base, the meta-ethical principles, which are nonmaleficence, autonomy, beneficence, fidelity, and justice. Statistical results indicated that in the child abuse scenario, professional ethics and legal considerations/laws of the State were considered most important, whereas in the HIV scenario, professional ethics were the preferred lower-level decision base. Across scenarios, the preferred higher-level decision base was nonmaleficence. There were differences across the child abuse and HIV scenarios in the perceived significance of the remaining lower-level decision base items as well as differences in perceived significance and ordering of the remaining meta-ethical principles. Limitations are discussed.

Crimes Involving Child Victims: Law Enforcement Reporting to Child Protective Services in Rural Communities

“…The present study seeks to identify the case characteristics of child victimizations that police report and do not report to CPS. Previous studies have found that case characteristics influence the reporting practices of other mandated reporters (Burkemper, 2002;Hansen et al, 1997;Jankowski & Martin, 2003). We expect to find that case characteristics specific to law enforcement will influence which incidents the police forwards to CPS.…”

“…Existing literature has examined factors associated with therapeutic professionals decisionmaking, including in scenarios involving mandated reporting of child maltreatment (Burkemper, 2002;Hansen et al, 1997;Jankowski & Martin, 2003;Kitchener, 1984). Those analyses describe the criticalevaluative decision-making approach, which theorizes that some professionals base decisions, such as child maltreatment reporting, on professional ethics and legal considerations rather than more intuitive reactions to a specific case (Burkemper, 2002;Jankowski & Martin 2003;Kitchener, 1984). In making decisions regarding what child victimization cases to report to CPS, police officers likely rely on laws within their jurisdiction as well as professional ethics.…”

Ethical Dilemmas Related to Disclosure Issues: Sex Addiction Therapists in the Trenches

“…Therapists' opinions on their duty to warn is variable (Burkemper, 2002). Helping professionals need to take very seriously the consequences to other people who are in a sexual relationship with the seropositive client.…”

Professional ethical beliefs and behaviors of clinical psychologists in Serbia

“…Ako muž nazove svoju ženu glupačom u afektu tokom seanse kod bračnog terapeuta da li odmah posle seanse zvati policiju i to prijaviti kao psihičko nasilje? Jedna autorka je postavila zanimljivo pitanje: Da li je "šopanje" deteta po stražnjici fizičko zlostavljanje i ako jeste, kolika mora biti snaga udaraca da bi se ta vrsta kažnjavanja okarakterisala kao fizičko nasilje u porodici, koje je neophodno prijaviti (Burkemper, 2002 I druga krivična dela, kao što su razbojništvo i trgovina ljudima potpadaju pod primere kada je potrebno kršiti poverljivost i zaštititi žrtve. Međutim, šta bi sve trebalo prijaviti policiji i drugim nadležnim državnim službama zavisi isključivo od zakona u jednoj državi (Appelbaum & Meisel, 1986).…”

“…Od najveće pomoći bilo je DPS, koje je omogućilo pristup svojoj bazi podataka. Iako nije bilo moguće pronaći sve kliničke psihologe, posebno edukante nekog psihoterapijskog pravca koji rade u privatnoj praksi "na crno" i ne oglašavaju se ili psihologe koji nisu članovi nijednog udruženja 53 , za spisak koji je formiran može se reći da 53 Podaci ostalih udruženja dostupni su javno na njihovim veb stranama npr. spisak sertifikovanih psihoterapeuta ili edukanata: T.A.…”