Lecture 2

Question 1

What is the difference between ethics and morals?

Answer 1

Ethics: based on ethical codes and
the subjective understanding of those
Morals: emphasises the widely-shared
communal or societal norms

Question 2

What are the 4 Principle’s in the NZ CODE

Answer 2

PRINCIPLE 1: Respect for the Dignity of Persons and Peoples
 PRINCIPLE 2: Responsible Caring
 PRINCIPLE 3: Integrity in Relationships
 PRINCIPLE 4: Social Justice and Responsibility to Society

Question 3

Name the parts in PRINCIPLE 1: RESPECT FOR DIGNITY OF PERSONS

Answer 3

General respect
 Non-discrimination
 Relations between Māori and non-Māori
 Sensitivity to diversity
 Children/young persons
 Privacy and confidentiality
 Informed consent

Question 4

PRINCIPLE 2: RESPONSIBLE CARING

Answer 4

Promotion of Wellbeing
 Competence
 Active participation
 Vulnerability
 Children/young persons
 Wellbeing of human research participants
 Wellbeing of animals

Question 5

PRINCIPLE 3: INTEGRITY IN RELATIONSHIPS

Answer 5

Honesty
 Personal Values
 Structure of Relationships
 Conflicts of interest

Question 6

PRINCIPLE 4: SOCIAL JUSTICE AND RESPONSIBILITY TO SOCIETY

Answer 6

Welfare of society
 Respect for society
 Benefit to society
 Accountability, standards and ethical practice

Question 7

What are ethical and professional obligations that may arise from the Code? (5)

Answer 7

Psychologists recognize that a basic ethical expectation of our discipline is that its activities will benefit members of society or, at the very least, do no harm
 Psychologists use the most respectful and effective interventions or strategies for those with whom they are working
 When a client’s needs lie outside of a psychologist’s expertise, the psychologist refers the client to other appropriate services
 Psychologists recognize that clients should actively participate in decisions that affect their welfare (they need to know all options)
 Psychologists maintain appropriate boundaries with those with whom they work and carefully consider their actions in order to maintain their role

Question 8

What are the 6 ethical decision making steps in the NZPB Code? (IDAAAE)

Answer 8

Identify
Develop
Analyze
Apply
Action
Evaluate

Question 9

What are 3 core competencies

Answer 9

Ability to evaluate efficacy, safety and validity of new approaches, therapies or techniqueswith expectations of doing good and no harm
 Implementation of ongoing evaluation (outcome measures)
 Knowledge of how to critically evaluate interventions and modify them

Question 10

What are 4 practical considerations to consider?

Answer 10

1 - Who is your client?
2 - What is the best intervention/technique?
3- To whom are you accountable?
4 - Is it ethical to withhold treatment options?

Question 11

HOW TO AVOID COMMON ETHICAL ISSUES? (8)

Answer 11

Understand what constitutes a multiple relationship: power, duration, termination
 Protect confidentiality
 Respect autonomy
 Identify your client and role: couples, family, team, court
 Accurate documentation
 Practice only where you have expertise
 Know the difference between abandonment and termination
 Stick to the evidence- scientist practitioner

Question 12

What are some parts of the importance of safety?

Answer 12

Safety can refer to physical, mental and emotional safety
 Includes:
 the client’s readiness to address issues in therapy,
 the level of support available to the client
 At times, the work of therapy needs to be put on hold

Question 13

What are some aspects relating to treatments causing harm?

Answer 13

Potential for psychological treatments to result in harmful outcomes
 Treatments cause harm when they make people worse or prevent them from getting
better (Dimidjan & Hollon, 2010)
 Examples: symptom deterioration, dropout or risk to interpersonal relations
 Potential harmful interventions: include specific protocols, deviations from evidencebased approaches, misapplication of evidence-based interventions, and applications of
interventions that lack underlying mechanisms for targeted problems

Question 14

What are some issues associated with the study of problems related to harmful effects?

Answer 14

Multidimensional, including the most obvious such as deterioration of functioning and
worsening of symptoms (Lilienfeld, 2007)
 Underexamined- only a few studies!
 Difficult to quantify
 Little systematic investigation into clinician-specific behaviours that might lead to harmful
outcomes

Question 15

What are 5 ways to address potential harmful interventions?

Answer 15

1 - Monitoring of outcomes
2 - Providing feedback to clinicians if clients fail to make progress (Lambert et al, 2003).
3 - Systematic investigation of therapeutic methods
4 - Comprehensive and careful assessment of the extent to which different structured protocols may be efficacious
5 - Goal: evidence-based practice

Question 16

What are Values?

Answer 16

 Individual beliefs that motivate people to act one way or another
 Beliefs about good behaviour and what things are important
 Guide for human behaviour
 We tend to adopt the values that they are raised with
 We tend to believe that those values are “right” because they are the values of our particular
culture

Question 17

What are values part 2?

Answer 17

Knowing your own values is important in therapy
 Consider your cultural, values, family background, spirituality, experiences, gender, sexual orientation
 As psychologists we are not ‘blank slates’
 We each have a history, culture, context, beliefs, assumptions, values
 In order to practice safely, we need to have insight and understanding of our own ‘self’ and ‘story’
and how this might influence how we practice

Question 18

What about cultural considerations and ethics?

Answer 18

Cultural considerations are important regarding values and ethics in psychology
 Ethical principles capture cultural considerations
 Ethical issues can be related to culture