Practical Ethical Challenges for Mental Health Professionals: Your Questions about Ethics Answered

A practical, hands-on guide to understanding and resolving common ethical issues that arise in mental health practice.

This book, intended for a broad range 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 exploring 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 Haynes has been a forensic psychologist for several decades. He obtained his PhD at Rutgers University. He specializes in child custody evaluations, and previously worked as a caseworker at the Oakland County (Michigan) Juvenile Court and assistant director, director, and then senior psychologist of the Juvenile Court Psychological Clinic. His expertise in child custody has led him to conduct seminars and workshops on custody and assessment in child custody cases.

Dr. Haynes is former president of the Michigan Psychological Association and has been associate editor of The Michigan Psychologist since 2008. He has served on the American Psychological Association’s Ethics Committee, including one term as chair of the committee in 2019. He is the co-author (with Henry Gornbein) of Child Custody: A Complete Guide for Parents (Momentum, 2020).

James Windell is a psychologist, author, and college instructor. He obtained his MA in clinical psychology at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. He is an adjunct faculty member in the Criminal Justice Department at Wayne State University. He has been a consultant to various juvenile court programs, the State of Michigan, the Michigan Department of Social Services, and to daycare and preschool programs.

Dr. Windell is editor of The Michigan Psychologist andthe author or co-author of 38 books, including Student’s Guide to Writing a Criminal Justice Research Paper (Kendall-Hunt, 2012) and The American Criminal Justice System (Cognella, 2013).