Ethics in Psychology and the Mental Health Professions; Standards and Cases

Most mental health professionals and behavioral scientists enter the field with a strong desire to help others, but clinical practice and research endeavors often involve decision-making in the context of ethical ambiguity. Good intentions are important, but unfortunately, they do not always protect the practitioner and client from breaches in ethical conduct. Academics, researchers, and students also face a range of ethical challenges from the classroom to the laboratory. Now in a new expanded edition, Ethics in Psychology and the Mental Health Professions, the most widely read and cited ethics textbook in psychology, has emerged with a broadened scope extending across the mental health and behavioral science fields. The revised volume considers many of the ethical questions and dilemmas that mental health professionals encounter in their everyday practice, research, and teaching. The book has been completely updated and is now also relevant for counselors, marriage and family therapists, social workers, and psychiatrists, and includes the ethics codes of those groups as appendices. Providing both a critical assessment and elucidation of key topics in the APA's guidelines, this comprehensive volume takes a practical approach to ethics and offers constructive means for both preventing problems, recognizing, approaching, and resolving ethical predicaments. Written in a highly readable and accessible style, this new edition retains the key features which have contributed to its popularity, including hundreds of case studies that provide illustrative guidance on a wide variety of topics, including fee setting, advertising for clients, research ethics, sexual attraction, how to confront observed unethical conduct in others, and confidentiality, among others. Ethics in Psychology and the Mental Health Professions will be important reading for practitioners and students-in training.

Gerald P. Koocher is Professor and Dean of the Graduate School for Health Studies at Simmons College. He has recently finished a term as president of the American Psychological Association (APA).
Patricia Keith-Spiegel is Voran Honors Distinguished Professor (Emeritus) of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Ball State University