Health is the most important and precious faculty of every living creature on Earth. There are a number of adages that tell humans to eat apples, sleep and rise early, brush teeth regularly etc for a healthy life. till 19th century this word only signified physical health i.e. smooth working heart, lungs, teeth and diseases like typhoid, cholera, small pox etc. ran rampant. Come 20th century the word took on a broader role and now health of the brain was also included. The 20th and 21st centuries growing economic, social and other issues have increased the occurrence of stress, depression and a wide range of other psychological disorders. Thus seeing psychologists and psychiatrists also became common place. So in this context how important is the ethical conduct of a mental health service provider? This paper will answer the question.
Ethical Principles
There are a number of mental health service providers such as an advocate, change agent, registered nurses, collaborator etc. A change agent is the one who aims at bringing change in the minds of the people. His main goal is to recover the patient from mental illness and let the patient to seek for hope. These change agents brings a positive mental change in families, individuals, communities, adults etc. They use education as their basic tool (Powell & Brodsky, 2004). In addition to this a registered psychiatric nurse is the one who work with mental health care organizations and their post keeps on increasing with the rise in education. These nurse work at two levels, advanced and basic. Basic level nurses work with different families and individuals; they diagnose the mental illness, plan the therapy and then implement it on the patient. On the other hand, registered nurses are specialist in a particular area. An advocate is the one who is appointed by an organization for mental health services; he must be highly qualified (Morrissey & Reddy, 2006).
As far as the ethical issues are concerned, mental health, service providers have direct connection with these ethical principles. Two most imperative ethical standards include boundaries and confidentiality (Leong, Pickren, Leach, & Marsella, 2012). Boundary put limits to certain tasks so that the task can be easily managed. Confidentiality refers to keeping the secrets of client within one's own self until and unless there is a legal requirement of leaking these secrets (Cordess, 2001).
A number of ethical standards have been made by mental health organizations such as ASA, AAMFT, and NASW etc. It is the primary right of a mentally disturbed patient that his information should be kept as secret with the mental health service provider. However, in some cases such circumstances may arise in which a service provider has to take a decision regarding leaking the clients information or keeping it as a sector (Barsky, 2010).
For instance, if a therapist leaks the client's information to others for his self-interest, this act is regarded as unethical. Apart from this, if the therapist leaks the clients information in a court where it is imperative to reveal the clients information then this act is not regarded unethical because the therapist in this case is legally bound to reveal everything about the patient. Similarly, if a therapist notices that the patient is attempting for a suicide, he should communicate this to others who are in relation with the patient. This is also not regarded as unethical because revealing this fact about the patient is important (Cordess, 2001).
The term privacy is also related to confidentiality and it refers to the fact that the therapist should not access the patient's personal records. However, in some circumstances, it becomes essential to have access to the personal records of the patient. In this case, if a therapist wants to be sure that he has maintained all the ethical standards while dealing with the patient; he should discuss this thing with the patient. It means that the therapist should let the patient know that he has an access to his personal data and records (Morrissey & Reddy, 2006). Revealing this fact to the patient will also help in building a strong therapeutic bond between the therapist and the patient besides maintaining the ethical standards.
As far as the ethical standard of psychiatric nurses is concerned, they are also responsible to maintain confidentiality of the patient (Powell & Brodsky, 2004). If a nurse wants to take any information from the patient or from his relatives, she must take a written permission from the one she is taking the information and from the organization in which the nurse is registered. In addition to this, this information which is acquired through informed consent should also be treated as confidential.
All the above-mentioned rules are also true for a change agent of mental illness. A change agent should reveal those facts about the patient, which he thinks can turn into danger for the society. In such circumstance, a change agent should reveal the patients information to the public (Leong, Pickren, Leach, & Marsella, 2012). However, here the question of informed consent arises. As it is mandatory for the therapist to inform the patient before revealing his information to others and if a patient will not agree to disclose such facts about him to the public, a change agent will be responsible to report this to the law enforcing agencies.
In addition to this, if a situation arises in which the patient has to disclose the patient's information on urgent basis then in this case, also a change agent is bound to let the patient know about it.
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