January/February 2024 Volume 23, No. 1

Demystifying Subpoenas

There’s an authoritative knock on the door of your solo practice. You open it, and a uniformed Sheriff’s deputy is standing there with a clipboard piled high with papers. He hands you one of the documents from the stack—in big letters across the top of a page scattered with numerous signature boxes and quasi-legalese you [...]

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November / December 2023 Volume 22, No.6

Dangerous Patients and You—Terminating a Contentious Relationship

Treating dangerous patients who represent a risk to themselves or others can often trigger worrisome ethical issues—What constitutes a reportable danger? Does a specific person have to be threatened? How specific does the threat have to be? Who must be informed of the threat? These are common but complex issues that are frequently discussed in [...]

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September / October 2023 Volume 22, No. 5

Reasonable Suspicion – Probable Cause – Preponderance of the Evidence – Beyond a Reasonable Doubt

There are many evidentiary standards that have different roles and requirements in our legal system. The one with which practitioners are most familiar is, of course, the one associated both with duty to warn requirements and mandatory reports of child abuse or neglect: a reasonable belief of imminent harm/ reasonable belief that child abuse has [...]

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November / December 2021 Volume 20, No. 6

Queer Therapists Practicing in Their Own Cultural Community: Proactive Ethical-Decision Making Suggestions

"If you are ever at the local drag show and you see me there, do not worry. I will not approach you and say hello. If you acknowledge me first, I will wave. I will not come up and start a conversation with you. This action is not me ignoring you, but it will allow [...]

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November / December 2021 Volume 20, No. 6

Navigating Client Generated Prejudice

In recent years, we have seen an increase in hate crimes and overt derogatory comments towards many cultural groups (Hassan, 2019). It would be naïve of us to think that oppressive language and behaviors do not enter the therapy room, as well. Therapists may hear derogatory statements about various groups that may or may not [...]

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November / December 2021 Volume 20, No. 6

Professional Competence and Integrity

How do you know if you’re a competent MFT? If you complete a graduate MFT degree and pass the AMFTRB National Exam, are you a professionally competent MFT? Do years of experience with client systems lead to improved therapeutic competence and better clinical outcomes? How do you know if you maintain high standards of professional [...]

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November / December 2021 Volume 20, No. 6

Family Therapy Ethics with Service Members, Veterans, and Their Families

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) is the largest employer in the world (World Economic Forum, 2019) thus it is highly likely that marriage and family therapists (MFTs), whether intentional or not, will have the opportunity to work with service members, veterans, and their families (SMVF) throughout their career. There are over 2.8 million military [...]

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November / December 2021 Volume 20, No. 6

The Solid Ground of Integrated Ethical Practice

Poet and writer Scott Woods (2014) says: The problem is that white people see racism as conscious hate, when racism is bigger than that. Racism is a complex system of social and political levers and pulleys set up generations ago to continue working on the behalf of whites at other people’s expense, whether whites know/like [...]

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March / April 2021 Volume 20, No.2

Ethical Decision Making in Unilateral Client Termination

Years ago, when I was in graduate school, there were no discussions on this subject. I don’t know if there are any now, but all of us who have practiced for any length of time have come face to face with situations where we have needed to end therapy without it being a mutual decision. [...]

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September / October 2020 Volume 19, No. 5

A Boomer, Pandemics, and Ethics

At the time of this writing, May has begun, and it feels more like Corona-tide than Eastertide as I write this ethics piece. At 64 years of age, I am at the median of those whose births occurred between 1946 and 1964, the post war baby boom. In the middle of a pandemic that appears [...]

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