Ethics Lapses Usually Start Small for Therapists

The WSJ Health Blog has an entry on how therapists start down the slippery slope towards ethics violations:

Being an ethical therapist isn’t about being well-respected, intelligent or capable. No recent example highlights the reality better than Jack Gorman’s fall from professor at Harvard Medical School and president of McLean Hospital, a world-renowned psychiatric facility, after a sexual relationship with a patient.

Having sex with a patient, common sense would say, is an obvious no-no. But what about going to the wedding of a patient’s child? Is it OK to give the last patient of the day a ride home in a driving rainstorm instead of leaving her stranded at a bus stop? Or what about treating the family member of a current or former patient?

Breaches of the accepted patient-therapist relationship, or “boundary violations,” are among the most common complaints made to the ethics committee of the American Psychiatric Association, committee chair Wade Myers tells the Health Blog.

More at the link. Of course, there is the usual rote reference to the guidelines of the various professional organizations.

The damning criticism is that these experts of the mind seem to be sorely lacking in any methodology for the rehabilitation of their own professional ethics. In fact, this is an area that they rarely address at all, relegating it to the world of mere "chemical imbalances".

If only it were so simple.