Ethical Conflicts in Mental Health Settings

Ethical Conflicts in Mental health Settings
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Ethical Conflicts in Mental health Settings
The proliferation of ethical issues in the mental health arena is commonplace. Every mental health professional is expected to be aware of them and has the applicable strategies that can help navigate those issues in mental health settings. Notably, mental health is one of the rising health problems, with data collected by the World Health Organization indicating that around 10 percent of the population suffers from mental illness (Jain et al., 2017). Given the biases and myths associated with mental disorders, ethics have a leading role in the protection of people with mental illness as well as enhancing the legitimacy of mental health professionals. Ethics has been described as the values and standards that an individual ascribes to themselves when interacting with the world. Being aware of ethical conflicts in the mental health arena is essential for a mental health professional keen to assist patients in the field.
A common ethical conflict that mental health professionals have to navigate in the workplace is the constant revision of the various diagnosis manual used to classify psychological disorders. To enhance the classification of mental disorders, the subjective criteria used in the diagnostic process are frequently revised to include new symptoms. DSM I had only 106 psychological diagnoses, a number that has more than tripled over time to 340 diagnoses in DSM V (Jain et al., 2017). As a result, the researchers experience a blurring of the boundary between abnormal and normal behavior. An ethical conflict emerges in the diagnosis stages as some have raised questions about the accuracy of the diagnosis manual. The ethical conflict is exacerbated by the tendency of some mental health professionals to wrongly diagnose a patient or come to differing conclusions about the psychological disorder that a patient has. Owing to the social and economic consequences of a mental health disorder, diagnosis is one of the most common ethical conflicts in the mental health arena.
Involuntary treatment of the patient presents one of the leading ethical conflicts in the mental health arena. The ethical conflicts largely stem from the compromised decision-making capacity that is commonly associated with psychological disorders. That is, a patient in the mental health arena, at times, lacks the capacity required to decide on their treatment plan. Most patients tend to perceive the treatment process as a threat as they are forced to observe controlled behaviors. The lack of decision-making capacity implies that psychologists are given significant leeway in determining the appropriate treatment plan for the patient. Any research or treatment of such patients requires a mental health professional to observe a certain level of discretion that may lead to ethical conflict (Schneider, 2016). That is, the psychologists are forced to apply the principles of beneficence and nonmaleficence when treating a patient, given that such patients have no autonomy or the ability to sign informed consent.
In addition to involuntary treatment, treatment selection by the pro...