Breach Of Confidentiality free essay sample

# 8211 ; The Legal Implications Essay, Research Paper Breach of confidentiality: the legal deductions when you are seeking therapyThe legal Deductions when You are seeking TherapyI. The demand for confidentiality in therapyA. Establish trustB. A patients measure of rightsThesis: The responsibility to warn has created an ethical quandary for psychological professionals. II. Therapists face a moral problemB. Requirement by jurisprudence to transgress confidentialityC. Exceptions for transgressing confidentialityD. Prediction of violenceE. Impact on clientI. The future mentality for therapy A. Conflicting positions between the legal and psychological professionsPeople are afraid to acknowledge to themselves and others that they need to assist to decide their psychological jobs. This is due to the societal stigma which society attaches to people, when they seek aid from a mental wellness professional. Consequently it is really hard for any individual to set up a trusting relationship with their healer, because they fear, that the healer mig ht uncover their most personal information and emotions to others. We will write a custom essay sample on Breach Of Confidentiality or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Health professionals hence created the patients measure of rights to put in assurance between clients and healers. The patient has a right to every consideration of privateness refering his ain medical attention plan. Case treatment, audience, scrutiny, and intervention are confidential and should be conducted discreetly. Those non straight involved in his attention must hold the permission of the patient to be present. The patient has the right to anticipate that all communications and records refering to his attention should be treated as confidential. ( Edge, 63 ) This measure of rights enables clients to unwrap all personal information without frights. To to the full confide in the healer is indispensable to the success of the therapy. On the other manus, the healer is lawfully obliged to transgress this trust when necessary. The responsibility to warn has created an ethical quandary for psychological professionals. The responsibility to warn is based on a tribunal opinion in 19 74. Tatiana Tarasoff was killed by Prosenjit Poddar. Prior to the killing Poddar had told his healer that he would kill Tatiana upon her return from Brazil. The psychologist tried to hold Poddar committed, but since the head-shrinker supervising this instance failed to take action, Poddar was neer committed nor was Tarasoff warned about Poddars purposes to kill her. This failure resulted in Tatianas decease. The Supreme Court hence ruled that the psychologist had a responsibility to warn people which could perchance go harmed ( Bourne, 195-196 ) . This policy, to warn endangered people, insures that healers must transgress there confidentiality for specific grounds merely. These few exclusions are: ten Harm Principle: When the practician can anticipate a danger to an person who is outside the patient/provider relationship, potentially caused by the patient, the injury rule provides the principle for transgressing confidentiality to warn the vulnerable person ( Edge, 63 ) . ten When the client is a possible danger to himself or herself ( Bourne,487 ) . x If the client is a condemnable suspect and uses insanity as a defence ( Bourne, 487 ) . x If the client is minor and the healer believes that he or she is the victim of a offense ( such as child maltreatment ) ( Bourne, 487 ) . The breach for a clients insanity defence would hold been helpful in make up ones minding a celebrated tribunal instance in 1843: the McNaghten s instance. McNaghten used the insanity defence, when he was faced with the charge of killing Sir Robert Peele s private secretary. A jury had to make up ones mind, if he was witting of the act or if he was impermanent insane ( McCarty, 299-300 ) . The jury clearly didn Ts have the professional preparation to do a competent determination. How did they set up if McNaghten knew right from incorrect at the clip of the offense? Therefore they were unqualified when make up ones minding that he, so, was temporarily insane. Now these findings are made b y qualified mental wellness professionals. However other obstructions are still being encountered. In the get downing the jurisprudence provides clear guidelines when to transgress confidentiality. The Harm Principle is one of the guidelines. But how can a healer perfectly determine, that a client presents injury to another person? To state that person is unsafe is to foretell future behaviour. The rarer an event, the harder it is to foretell accurately. Hence if dangerousness is defined as homicide or self-destruction, both of which are rare events, the anticipation of dangerousness will necessarily affect many undue committednesss every bit good as justified 1s ( Alloy, 570 ) . The healer must foretell the capacity for force in the client. There are no guidelines to set up such a diagnose. All that is mandated by the sentiment is that the healer exercising that sensible grade of accomplishment, cognition, and care normally possessed and exercised by members of [ their peculiar pro fession ] under similar fortunes Within the wide scope of sensible pattern and intervention in which professional sentiment and judgement may differ, the healer is free to exert his or her ain best judgement without liability ; proof aided by hindsight, that he or she judged wrongly is deficient to set up carelessness ( Annas, 198 ) . The healer is faced with an huge challenge. He has to trust onto himself or herself merely. Merely aided by his or her professional preparation to measure the client and taught and /or self-learned moralss to depend on. Adding the fact that the clients future remainders on his judgement, the sum of force per unit area and emphasis can merely be imagined. As if this quandary International Relations and Security Network T already hard plenty for the healer, more obstructors have to be conquered to do a qualified finding of the clients dangerousness. A therapists anticipation is like a mathematical equation with many known and unknown variables. There are four unknown factors involved in the decision-making process:1. Lack of disciplinary feedback. When clients become committed to a mental installation, because they were considered harmful, we can non detect if this individual would represent a danger to others if discharged. 2. Diff erential consequences to the predictor. Wrongfully discharged individuals which are discovered to be harmful (false negatives) cause extremely negative publicity. Wrongfully committed harmless individuals (false positives) don t cause that kind of publicity.3. Unreliability of the criterion. The only concrete indication for forecasting a clients violence is a prior record of encountered violence, which might be questionable. 4. Powerlessness of the subject. Until not long ago, wrongfully accused and then committed individuals had few rights to fight this wrongful decision ( Alloy, 571-572 ). All of these factors encourage mental health professionals to err in the direction of overpredicting dangerousness. Do they in fact do so? Studies of predictions of dangerousness have yielded far more false positives than false negatives ( Alloy, 572 ). When a therapist makes an erroneous decision based on these factors, he cannot be held liable, since he or she cannot know how truthful all evi dence represents a clients state of mind. However should a therapist be punished for making too many incorrect warnings, because he or she is in constant distress about his or her legal liability? and therefore to protect themselves against liability imposed by a duty to disclose, therapists are likely to make many warnings ( Annas, 197-198 ). The dictated responsibility to protect the public by blowing the whistle on their clients can lead a therapist to view differently how to conduct their therapy sessions with clients. How non-judgmental can a therapist remain, when ordered by our legal system, to choose the well-being of the public over his or her clients well-being ? What impact will this have on the clients behavior?Gaining and upholding a clients trust is a most difficult task for the therapist. Especially because a client never completely loses his or her fear that a therapist might disclose certain or all personal information to a third party. When the client becomes aware of the fact, that the therapist is legally obligated to disclose certain case information in order to prosecute or commit the client if necessary, commonly the client will not seek therapy or abandon current therapy to avoid possible negative consequences. These warnings are likely to cause their patients to terminate treatment and possibly act out their aggressive impulses ( Annas, 198 ). Seldomly will distressed individuals regain their mental health without professional help. Since they do not wish to receive assistance, due to the possibility of legal repercussions, they often follow a detrimental path. Finding themselves unable to resist their urges, they act out their aggressiveness. The targeted person gets harmed, or even worse, killed. Therapists therefore argue that a sharp increase in involuntary commitments and preventable crimes will be the secondary, long-term result of the imposed duty to warn. Conflicting views between the legal and psychological professions have al ways existed. This is due to the nature of these opposite professions. The legal community restricts their views to verifiable, concrete, therefore empirical evidence only. The psychological community however cannot be that rigid. Mental health professionals deal with facts (reality), but they also have to deal with their clients emotions, beliefs and irrational beliefs. Empathy and trustworthiness play an important role when counseling clients. Courts and mental health professionals have something in common, they both try to protect the welfare of others. Legal practitioners look out for the well-being of the general population. This next statement perfectly reflects their view:Hospitals and the medical sciences, like other public institutionsand professions, are charged with the public interest. Their image ofresponsibility in our society makes them prime candidates for con-verting their moral duties into legal ones. Noblesse Oblige ( Annas, 199 ). Mental health practitioners howe ver focus on the well-being of the individual. To protect and serve the general population as commanded by the courts created an ethical dilemma for psychological professionals. The courts force them to act contradicting to their professional beliefs and ethics. Therapists reason that when they must serve the public they cannot successfully treat their clients. Or how can they treat an individual at all, if the person won t consider entering therapy do to the possibly grim consequences ?Highly advanced communication devises erode our personal privacy more every day. Now the court system seems to follow this trend. Therapists are trying to fight these developments and question the true motives of the court system. More research has to be conducted to find better alternatives. Maybe this ethical dilemma can be resolved in the future, maybe more ethical dilemmas will surface. We are all individuals and should be treated with our own individual interests in mind. Maybe we should indulge in more economic thinking, to fuse the well-being of the individual with the well-being of the general population and thereby eliminating the ethical dilemma. Economic theory can verify, that when individuals act in their own best self-interest, the population as a whole will benefit from it, too. This economic principle also applies to psychology. ReferencesAlloy, L. B., Acocella, J., Bootzin, R. R. ( 1996 ) . Abnormal psychology . USA: McGraw-Hill . Annas, G. J. ( 1988 ) . Judging medicine . New Jersey: Humana Press . Bourne, L. E., Jr., Ekstrand, B. R. ( 1985 ) . Psychology: Its principles and meanings USA: Holt, Rinehart and Winston . Edge, R. S., Groves, J. R. ( 1994 ) . The ethics of health care . USA: Delmar Publishing . McCarty, D. G. ( 1967 ) . Psychology and the law . New Jersey: Prentice-Hall Breach of Confidentiality:The legal Implications when You are seeking TherapyI. The need for confidentiality in therapyA. Establish trustB. A patients bill of rightsThesis: The duty to warn has created an ethical dilemma for psychological professionals. II. Therapists face a moral problemB. Requirement by law to breach confidentialityC. Exceptions for breaching confidentialityD. Prediction of violence