Legal Guidelines, Ethics Codes, and Specialty Guidelines

Legal guidelines, ethics codes, and specialty guidelines play a tremendous part in the way that practitioners conduct diagnoses and assessments in general. In addition to formal training, the aforementioned legal and ethical guidelines help to constitute the general procedures and practices that professionals must adhere to while performing their jobs. It is especially important for psychologists, not to mention forensic psychologists, to follow these mandated codes. These professionals play critical roles in interacting with the public. As such, they must be accountable to standards that play a positive or assistive role in aiding the public to deal with a number of substantial issues that can seriously impact their lives.

The main way that legal guidelines, ethics codes and specialty guidelines influence the daily operations of psychologists in terms of diagnosis and assessment is by keeping them honest. These professionals can best achieve the desired outcomes of their jobs -- assisting people -- by maintaining a non-partisan perspective that allows them to perform their duties fairly. Violations of these mandates would more than likely result in preferential (or, perhaps even worse) biased treatment of patients or clients in which the true role of a psychologist is not actually being fulfilled.

Specifically in terms of assessment and diagnosis, state and legal mandates help ensure that there is a higher degree of accuracy in performing these different functions of a practitioner's job. Failing to fulfill some of these codes would lead to misrepresentations and disinformation that could have a negative impact on both the clients as well as one of society's important institutions -- psychological practice. Adherence grants a greater likelihood that psychologists will be able to determine the truth about their clients and their situations, which is usually the first step in facilitating some sort of curative or positive outcome from that situation.

One of the most salient ethical principles pertains to engaging in personal relationships with a practitioner's client. Although there are certain instances in which it is permissible for practitioners to disclose personal information of their own to clients -- such as in the case of modeling, in which practitioners demonstrate how they handle situations that may be relevant to their clients -- there are specific mandates regarding the limitations which exist between the relationships between the former and the latter. For instance, it is generally unacceptable for practitioners to engage in "sexual intimacies" (ASPPB) with their clients, because doing so can pervert the psychologist's ability to detail assessments and diagnoses in a way that is objective and non-partisan.