My Ethical Guidelines for Effective Psychotherapy

My Ethical Guidelines for Effective Psychotherapy

Psychiatrists, by definition, are mental health professionals, studying and modifying human behaviors. Scarcity of ethics, standards and values and study on the self-care of psychotherapist is disquieting. Ethical basis of psychology essentially requires the practitioner to be ethically aware and eagerly responsible. For a psychiatrist, identification of his own misconduct is a greater challenge than identifying the misconduct of his clients, and it all sums up to the responsibility of practitioner's own ethical practice. Standard codes of ethics are not always sufficient and applicable to every situation and to interpret the code of ethics according to the client's situation is also a complex process (Norcross, J. & Guy, J. 2007).

Code of ethics for practitioners of mental health differs from one professional organization or regulatory boards to other, for example American Psychological Association (APA) and the National Association of Social Workers have defined certain guidelines for psychological practices. These publications may contain particular resources which help the practitioner to comprehend the ethical decisions according to scenarios but a psychiatrist also need his/her own set of standards to ethically evaluate personal and client's situation. Relying heavily on principles alone may diminish the personal qualities of the practitioner and lower the ethical aspect of the therapeutic relationship or counseling. A psychiatrist should be able to base his/her therapy on standard principles as well as his own ethical awareness and analytical and problem solving skill.

As Welfel (2010) points out that code of ethics are guidance for few problems but cannot be considered as a cookbook for responsible professional behavior for mental-health practitioners. Code of Ethics, therefore is necessary but cannot be considered as a sufficient resource for exercising all ethical responsibilities. Mental health practitioners need their own specific standards or guidelines on which they intend to base their approaches. As a psychiatrist, I am responsive to the abilities, culture and needs of my client and have my own way to validate my approach to evaluate my personal and client's action. This approach is based on following three basic principles

Ethical values

Ethical principles

Moral qualities

Ethical values

Different variation patterns in the needs of clients and their cultural diversity are feasible to be understood in terms of values. I express my ethical commitment to my client in terms of these professional values. Values represent a way for the expression of a general ethical commitment which gets more action oriented and specifically defined when they are expressed as a principle. Respecting the client's rights and dignity

Ensuring client's safety

Protecting personal-client relationship's integrity

Lessening personal sufferings and distresses and increasing personal effectiveness

Providing fair and adequate psychotherapy services and counseling.

Ethical principles

Ethical principles of psychotherapy direct attention of a practitioner to important ethical responsibilities. However, it is not possible to reconcile all the ethical principles, and in such cases, we are required to make choices between them. Choice of the principle does not make other principle unethical but unnecessary in the given circumstances. The principles on which my practices are based are as ...