Search

Elizabeth M. Vera and Suzette L. Speight (2003 [this issue]) challenge counseling psychologists to sharpen the field's response to social justice. This challenge is part or a broader effort by critical psychologists who believe that mainstream psychology's values, assumptions, and practices reinforce an unjust status quo. Despite persistent resistance to calls for change, the critical agenda can aid practitioners who seek both to help their diverse clients and to try to transform psychology rather than abandon it for settings more conducive to justice-enhancing work.

This article discusses ethical issues concerning managed mental health care plans. Topics include an analysis of Cooper's and Gottleib's definition of managed health care, and the evolution of managed care.

With the advent of managed care, counseling psychologists are encountering vexing ethical issues. These issues arise not only for practitioners but for researchers, educators, and trainers as well. In this article, the authors briefly describe the evolution of managed care and review basic biomedical ethics and ethical decision-making models. The authors then examine specific ethical issues and offer suggestions for practice, research, and education and training. This article concludes with a research agenda, a review of projected general trends in health care delivery, and a discussion of counseling psychology's role in addressing current concerns as well as influencing the future evolution of health care delivery.

Virtue ethics can facilitate the process of ethical decision making and policy development in multicultural settings. However, several questions remain unanswered on the relationship of community, virtues and psychological processes. Virtue ethics may be an essential component in improving the ethical competence of psychologists particularly in establishing appropriate ethical conduct in multicultural settings.

I raise four issues that militate against adopting virtue ethics as a guiding concept: (a) In the resolution of most ethics cases, virtue ethics is irrelevant; (b) there is substantial redundancy between virtue and principle ethics; (c) acting and deciding are unavoidable tasks for which principle ethics is particularly suitable; and (d) the emphasis on character and community wisdom increases the possibility of idiosyncratic and unsound decision making.

Psychologists must address ethics education if virtue and character are to be considered as important aspects of the ethical professional. The interactions with clients, peers and relatives are more affected by the psychologists' moral character than by their ability to weigh ethical principles. Ethics in psychology is an important issue, especially in the area of education and development of ethical behavior among psychologists.

Principle ethics can be described as a set of prima facie obligations one considers when confronted with an ethical dilemma. Virtue ethics focuses on character traits and nonobligatory ideals that facilitate the development of ethical individuals. Within the context of the assumption that the major responsibilities or primary goals of professionals are to be competent and to serve the common good, we suggest that integrating these complementary ethical perspectives provides a coherent structure for enhancing the ethical competence of psychologists and counselors and the level of public trust in the character and actions of these professions and their members. Virtue ethics, rooted in the narratives and aspirations of specific communities, can be particularly helpful to professionals in discerning appropriate ethical conduct in multicultural settings and interactions. We propose that future directions for research and instruction be expanded from quandary ethics to encompass issues of character.

The author proposes an alternative perspective on deriving ethical guidelines for psychologists. This proposal presents the position that in a pluralistic society, we cannot continue to derive moral imperatives from a Western civilization perspective. We need to develop strategies to arrive at a set of virtues or principles to guide our profession that address the diversity in the United States. Further, we need to take a similar approach in proposing ethical guidelines for an international, cross-cultural context. The article presents a paradigm shift in thinking among psychologists on how to function effectively in a pluralistic society and in a global economy.

This article outlines a strategy for reporting child abuse or neglect, balancing ethical responsibilities and clinical limit setting. Presented in decision-tree form, the strategy is a hierarchy of autonomy respecting acts offering clients a variety of options for reporting abuse or neglect.