Ethical Obligation: A Case Study

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2.2) Ethical obligations VS Legal obligations
Therapists/counsellors often times practice in private with little oversight. And so the counsellors must seek additional training, education and supervision to uphold the trust given to them by the public. Ethical standards are mostly devised by an organisation to usher the behaviour of certain professionals in specific directions.
Laws however are more dictatorial than ethical standards set by an organisation carry much greater penalties if they are not up held. In a situation where ethical obligations and legal obligations seem to conflict with each other, the professional must work to ensure to solve the conflict in a responsible manner. But often times it’s not surprising that the counsellor
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On the other hand some minor consent laws allow certain minors to seek treatment for certain conditions without the consent of their parents.
When dealing with situations dealing with child abuse every health practitioner is advised to report it in 72 to 24 hours of first having suspected. Moreover when a therapist is dealing with a potentially suicidal client the professional should at first determine the lethality/ seriousness of the threat, conduct an assessment of how serious/dangerous the situation is and finally based on the observation decide if the duty to warn is applicable to the situation.
Duty to warn VS duty to protect Duty to warn means that the social worker or therapist informs the intended victim that there is a danger of violence to him/her. Duty to protect means that the counsellor feels that his/her client poses a serious threat to another and has the duty to warn the intended victim of such behaviour from the client. This may be in the form of a warning, notifying the police, or any other steps that can be taken to protect the
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Therapist should find out if the client had a history of harming another individual or violent behaviour or had thought of harming another. It is also imperative that the counsellor finds out the violent behaviour is due to the clients mental illness or they simply pose as a danger for other individuals. For instance if an individual diagnosed with HIV continues on being sexually active without using the appropriate safety measures than the therapist may respond to such a threat by either informing the victim, or inform the proper

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