Ethics in Behavioral Health Practice

Ethics in Behavioral Health Practice

Arizona Board of Behavioral Health Examiners Rules and Laws is a board that was established to regulate the mental practice of behavioural or psychological specialists. It defines the scope of practice for professionals and maintains standards on qualifications and regulations for mental professionals to protect the clients receiving mental services. Apart from licensing behavioural specialists, they do investigations and discipline the violators of the rules.

The American Counselling Association Code of Ethics is a scientific, educational, and professional organization that empowers mental psychiatrists, patients, and affected families to uphold mental health wellness and mental health organizations (Harris & Birnbaum, 2015). Professional values help mental health providers to commit to the code of ethics. These professional values include social justice promotion, upholding integrity between the patient and health provider, respecting diversity and embracing cultural differences, and carrying out one’s duties ethically and competently.

These two complement each other since the American Counselling Association educates behavioural specialists on principles of ethics such as autonomy, beneficence, confidentiality, and no-harm protocol. The Arizona Board, on the other hand, ensures that these principles are adhered to by specialists during mental service provision and punishes any violators of the rules.

Every patient has a right to privacy and confidentiality regardless of ethnicity, race, or cultural differences. All behavioural professionals have a role in safeguarding and fighting for privacy, confidentiality, and security rights.

Importance of Privacy

Confidentiality protects data; it oversees who gets information and who does not. The health record information is kept among the agreed persons except for the third parties. Unauthorized disclosures of data breach the principle of confidentiality. With the emerging and changing technology, the security of health records is of concern. Unauthorized access, use, and modification of health records or data stored in hardware will likely be tempered if solid security measures are not implemented.

Arizona statute of professions and occupations on Behavioral health professionals insists on a confidential relationship between the client and licensed health professional. A legal guardian of the client has a right to decide on the treatment options unless the legal guardian reserves it expressly to the client. The federal law or state has a right to seek health services concerned with behaviour without any guardian consent. This helps to protect the client’s boundaries from any exposure of their information to a third party. If the mental specialist violates this confidentiality rule, he is reprimanded or even stopped from practising his profession.

A statute on confidential records, immunity, and definition takes on the subtopic of confidentiality and privacy; it describes that information and any health records that relate to the client’s mental health are confidential and should not be disclosed to any third party (Pennington et al., 2017). This information is only privileged to the patient. The statute on confidentiality of records classifies all the information and health records during disability management to be private. Chapter 8 of the American Board of Examiners addresses the violation of the above statutes with restitution and fines.

Confidentiality is a code of ethics that governs healthcare personnel. It helps to build trust and develop trust between the client and behavioural health professionals. It allows the client to understand that their personal life, problems, and any issues they have belong to them. The client and the behavioural specialist have an open talk characterized by the free flow of information.

Confidentiality also improves the efficiency of healthcare delivery. The clients open up to the professionals during the assessment. Therefore, they can carry out a comprehensive and more detailed evaluation that aids in planning for treatment.

It helps to keep the information of the client private. The client decides when the doctor discloses the knowledge to manage the mental conditions of patients. To some patients, disclosing information to a relative they always fight with will not only cause them developmental disorders such as stress but also worsen their condition. Therefore, confidentiality helps to improve patient outcomes.

Privacy is currently a basic need of any human being (Blobel et al., 2016). Data privacy for patients helps to maintain health records for future reference. For example, when a mental psychologist wants to track a mentally ill person, they search for the information electronically to save time. It keeps the progress of many patients who visit a health facility. Data privacy, security, and confidentiality give a hospital a competitive advantage.

Higher health data quality that has no modifications. Data privacy also prevents data leakage in cases where informed consent has not been obtained. This is reported mainly in the cases of medical researchers. They take patient’s details without seeking permission and publish them. Critical health data is protected from the public, preventing fear and the emergence of chaos in the state. These data include some pandemic cases, especially raw data awaiting laboratory re-investigations.

Higher medical care is a result of higher health data quality. The accurate data used by mental psychologists help analyze what type of pharmacological drug has worked for many patients and which medicine has failed even with the trial. Therefore, medical research is also improved, and the intervention plan of the patient is easily tracked.

Patients are given and assured control of their health data. This control enables them to share data across several healthcare systems. This helps patients with critical illnesses who need more advanced health treatment.

References

Harris, B., & Birnbaum, R. (2015). Ethical and legal implications on the use of technology in counselling. Clinical Social Work Journal, 43(2), 133-141.

Pennington, M., Patton, R., Ray, A., & Katafiasz, H. (2017). A brief report on the ethical and legal guides for technology use in marriage and family therapy. Journal of marital and family therapy, 43(4), 733-742.

Blobel, B., Lopez, D. M., & Gonzalez, C. (2016). Patient privacy and security concerns on big data for personalized medicine. Health and Technology, 6(1), 75-81.

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Explore the Arizona state and local laws on the State of Arizona Board of Behavioral Health Examiners Rules and Laws website and the American Counseling Association Code of Ethics Resources website.

Ethics in Behavioral Health Practice

Write a 750-1,000-word essay including the following:

Are these two resources complementary or adversarial? What makes you think so?
Analyze the importance of three state laws or statutes and three ethics codes related to privacy, security, and confidentiality of patient medical and mental health records, including any pertinent issues about electronic records.
Support your opinions with two or more scholarly resources.
Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines in the APA Style Guide in the Student Success Center. An abstract is not required.

This assignment uses a rubric. Please review the title before beginning the work to familiarise yourself with the expectations for successful completion.

You are required to submit this assignment to LopesWrite. Refer to the LopesWrite Technical Support articles for assistance.

Benchmark Information

This benchmark assignment assesses the following programmatic competencies:

BS Behavioral Health Science

2.5: Evaluate the Code of Ethics and specific state laws and rules for behavioural health.

4.3: Analyze the importance of privacy, security, and confidentiality with patient medical and health records.