Ethics and Boundaries 3 CE

Professional Ethics and Boundaries for Mental Health Professionals 

3 CE and 3 NBCC approved clock-hours

Course Description

This course reviews the ethical standards governing marriage and family therapists, mental health counselors, and clinical social workers through the AAMFT, ACA, and NASW Codes of Ethics.

Topics include informed consent, confidentiality and HIPAA, documentation, professional competence, boundaries and multiple relationships, supervision, technology-assisted services, financial practices, advertising, and professional integrity. Practical case examples illustrate how ethical standards apply to real-world clinical situations.

The course also examines professional boundaries, boundary crossings and violations, self-disclosure, physical contact, sexual misconduct under Florida law, and key similarities and differences among the three professional codes. It concludes with an overview of the AAMFT, ACA, and NASW ethics complaint processes

Course Learning Objectives  

1. Identify the structure and purpose of the AAMFT Code of Ethics (2015), the ACA Code of Ethics (2014), and the NASW Code of Ethics (2017, as amended 2021), and distinguish aspirational core values, principles, and preambles from enforceable ethical standards. 

2. Compare the core values of the three codes, including the NASW Code’s six core values and the ACA Code’s professional values and ethical principles (autonomy, nonmaleficence, beneficence, justice, fidelity, and veracity). 

3. Identify the clinician’s responsibility to clients under all three codes, including client welfare, nondiscrimination, informed consent, self-determination, confidentiality and its limits, and the relationship between the ethics codes and HIPAA. 

4. Identify standards of professional competence and integrity, including maintaining competence, managing impairment, professional boundaries and multiple relationships, and honesty and transparency. 

5. Identify responsibilities to students, supervisees, and employees, including ethical supervision, fair evaluation, and prohibitions on exploitation and sexual intimacy in evaluative relationships. 

6. Identify ethical research and publication practices, including institutional approval, informed consent to research, participant protection, and accurate reporting. 

7. Identify standards governing technology-assisted professional services, including teletherapy and distance counseling standards, informed consent for electronic services, and security of electronic records and communications. 

8. Identify standards of professional and public responsibility, including advocacy, integrity in public statements, and avoiding conflicts of interest. 

9. Distinguish fair billing practices from prohibited financial arrangements and identify each code’s approach to bartering and gifts. 

10. Identify each code’s requirements for truthful advertising and accurate representation of credentials. 

11. Define professional boundaries and the therapeutic frame and distinguish boundary crossings from boundary violations. 

12. Recognize warning signs of boundary erosion and identify appropriate uses of self-disclosure and physical contact in clinical practice. 

13. Identify Florida law and rule governing sexual misconduct by psychotherapists, including the treatment of the therapist–client relationship as continuing in perpetuity for purposes of sexual misconduct. 

14. Describe the ethics complaint processes of the AAMFT, ACA, and NASW, and the relationship between association discipline and state licensing board discipline.

Course # 20-1392971