Liability and mental health services.

Abstract

Under the current tort-malpractice system, mental health malpractice claims often harm defendants' reputations, disrupt relationships among providers, and breach patient confidentiality. Common areas of malpractice, together with difficulties in defining the standard of care and proving causation, are examined. Reform proposals involving the options of interdisciplinary compensation panels or binding arbitration are designed to protect plaintiff privacy, reduce time and cost of litigation, and increase satisfaction with the dispute resolution process.

Believers and Skeptics: Where Social Worker Situate Themselves Regarding the Code of Ethics

“…Clients are suing helping professionals for a variety of issues related to the delivery of service (Smith, 1994), of which boundary violations of various kinds are predominant (Strom-Gottfried, 1999). This can create, in the mind of some professionals, a siege or defensive mentality (Borys, 1994), which can bode ill for a strong therapeutic alliance.…”

Recommendations for risk-management practices.

“…All mental health professionals should be concerned about risk-management behaviors for the following reasons: The threat or actual filing of a complaint or a malpractice suit can be extremely stressful and emotionally exhausting. This can produce difficulties for the practitioners in both their professional and personal lives (Smith, 1994). Schoenfeld, Hatch, and Gonzalez (2001) found that psychologists going through the complaint process reported a variety of problems, including depression, significant anxiety and anger, sleep disorders, sexual dysfunction, marital dysfunction, emergence of physical symptoms and medical problems, and interpersonal difficulties. A complaint or suit can be time-consuming (Montgomery, Cupit, & Wimberley, 1999).…”