Psychology Case of Young Man with AIDS and Hemophilia

Duty To Warn or Protect:
Case of Young Man with AIDS and Hemophilia
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Duty To Warn or Protect: Case of Young Man with AIDS and Hemophilia
This case of a young man who has been diagnosed of hemophilia and recently shown to be positive for the AIDS virus, wanting to ask the aid of a counselor to tell his girlfriend and her family, however, was unfortunately admitted to the hospital before the set meeting is a classic example of the dilemma counselors, educators and even mental health providers are faced with regarding clients’ rights to confidentiality or duty to warn or protect third parties. In this essay, I aim to go over the issues that needed to be addressed when a counselor is faced with such dilemma. Do I, as a counselor and educator for the Hemophilia Foundation, remain faithful to my client’s rights to confidentiality? Or does my duty to warn or protect the young man’s girlfriend and her family, as there is the threat of possible infection to these unsuspecting third party, far outweighs my obligation to my client’s confidentiality rights? What are the ethical and legal issues I possibly face in maintaining client confidentiality against violating this as a means to inform a possibly affected group of people who may have also exposed another potential third party to HIV? What does state law say about my obligations and duty to both my client or his girlfriend and family?
One of the hallmarks of the mental health vocation is the binding confidentiality. The American Psychiatric Association (APA) considers this of supreme importance in order to deliver the most appropriate and effective treatment, given the unique nature of mental health treatment ADDIN CSL_CITATION { "citationItems" : [ { "id" : "ITEM-1", "itemData" : { "ISBN" : "0890421439", "ISSN" : "0002953X", "abstract" : "In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) published the first edition of The Principles of Medical Ethics With Anno\u00adtations Especially Applicable to Psychiatry. Subsequently, revisions were published as the APA Board of Trustees and the APA Assembly approved additional annotations. In July of 1980, the American Medical Associa\u00adtion (AMA) approved a new version of the Principles of Medical Ethics (the first revision since 1957), and the APA Ethics Committee incor\u00adporated many of its annotations into the new Principles, which resulted in the 1981 edition and subsequent revisions. The current version includes changes to the Principles approved by the AMA in 2001. However, these general guidelines have sometimes been difficult to interpret for psychiatry, so further annotations to the basic principles are offered in this document. While psychiatrists have the same goals as all physicians, there are special ethical problems in psychiatric prac\u00adtice that differ in coloring and degree from ethical problems in other branches of medical practice, even though the basic principles are the same. The annotations are not designed as absolutes and will be revised from time to time so as to be applicable to current practices and prob\u00adlems.", "container-title" : "American Journal of Psychiatry", "id" : "ITEM-1", "issue" : "9", "issued" : { "date-parts" : [ [ "1973" ] ] }, "page" : "...