Navigating Care From Afar: Ethical Considerations for Police Welfare Checks

Vitiello, Evan; Moseley, Daniel D.

doi:10.1176/appi.ps.202000732

Cited by 2 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…Finally, the therapist can use the informed consent time to discuss the possibility of welfare checks and the client’s preference for how police are or are not utilized. Researchers suggest that this is another opportunity to increase transparency, autonomy, and nurture the therapeutic relationship from the onset of therapy, while hopefully eliminating the need for police to be involved in welfare checks in the future (Vitiello & Moseley, 2021; Wortzel, Barnes, Cannizzaro, Villarreal, Matarazzo, et al, 2019).…”

Section: An Abolitionist Approach To Safety Planning In Psychotherapymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Recently, scholars have critiqued the inefficacy of policing in the therapeutic context and suggest increased police training as a solution (McLeod et al, 2020;Vitiello & Moseley, 2021). This approach unfortunately disregards decades of abolitionist scholarship that has shown that attempting to solve harmful policing via training ignores the failed history of past attempts to improve training and only further inscribes the legitimacy and power of police (Hinton, 2017;Murakawa, 2014;Schrader, 2019;Vitale, 2017).…”

Section: Policing In a Therapeutic Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Research in the field often assumes that police are experts in safety or that they must be involved in safety planning procedures (Fiorillo et al, 2011; Murray et al, 2014). Police are often sent to do “welfare checks” on clients who are perceived by the therapist to be at increased risk and have missed an appointment, even though there is no research supporting the clinical effectiveness of police welfare checks (Vitiello & Moseley, 2021). Utilizing police as “welfare” responders in people’s homes neglects the fact that many clients might not experience this as care, but instead be subjected to fear, intrusion, loss of privacy, criminalization/incarceration, feelings that one’s rights have been violated, and reduced desire to discuss important therapeutic issues or suicidality in the future (Wortzel, Barnes, Cannizzaro, Villarreal, Allen, et al, 2019, Wortzel, Barnes, Cannizzaro, Villarreal, Matarazzo, et al, 2019).…”

Section: Policing In a Therapeutic Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Decentering the use of police: An abolitionist approach to safety planning in psychotherapy.

Drustrup¹,

Kivlighan²,

Ali³

2023

Psychotherapy

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The dominant narrative in much of the world, but especially the West, is that public safety and security are provided by policing. Psychotherapy invests in this dominant narrative via its reliance on emergency services provided by the state, such as 911 and police, to pursue the safety of clients and the larger society. However, the long-documented history of oppressive systems of policing suggest that these dominant narratives operate to protect powerful groups while surveilling and policing marginalized people, but particularly Black and Brown communities. As such, critical and abolitionist movements have rejected the idea that policing provides safety and have sought out alternative methods for ensuring community wellness and safety. Although the field of psychology has broadly expressed interest in growing its critical lens and interrupting systems of power, very little has directly addressed how carceral logics influence psychotherapy practice, and how this influences the client's sense of safety in therapy. This manuscript argues for an abolitionist approach to informed consent and safety planning in psychotherapy to address the disparate ways that clients, and especially marginalized clients such as Black and Brown people, experience psychotherapy's traditional use of systems of policing and state authority. Clinical illustrations are provided and future directions are discussed. Clinical Impact StatementQuestion: This article addresses whether there are alternatives to the way that psychotherapy traditionally centers police and 911 services during informed consent and safety planning. Findings: Clinicians can use the recommendations offered in this article to restructure their informed consent and safety planning procedures to address the disparate experiences of authorities that clients, especially marginalized clients, may have. Meaning: This article offers a new approach to informed consent and safety planning that utilizes abolitionist ideologies and builds a network of personal and community support systems. Next Steps: Future research should empirically investigate this approach as well as seek out other abolitionist approaches to psychotherapy.

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Section: An Abolitionist Approach To Safety Planning In Psychotherapymentioning

confidence: 99%