Assignment: Addressing Ethical Issues

Helping professionals often face difficult decisions in their work that may have ethical ramifications. Ethical dilemmas span all areas of your professional practice from confidentiality and privacy to cultural considerations. For this Assignment, you concentrate on cultural considerations that may pose challenges to ethical practice. (Culture is broadly defined here as the behaviors, traditions, and/or beliefs of any subgroup.) Select one of the two case studies below to use for this assignment. After analyzing the case study, consider how you might address the issues present using your professional practice code of ethics.

Review the case studies below before completing the Assignment.

Case Study #1

Nitin and Priya are first-generation Indian-American immigrants, while their 16-year-old son was born and raised in the United States. They were reluctant to engage in treatment, but are doing so at the request of their son, Sujay. In Sujay’s view, his parents are being overly controlling regarding his upcoming choice of college, which is causing increasingly frequent clashes between him and his parents. Sujay wants to attend art school, while his parents want him to attend engineering school. They state that a career in science, religion, law, or medicine is the appropriate path for a person of his caste. Sujay claims that while he wants to please his parents, he feels they are stifling his passion and imposing cultural norms that, to him, are a part of their “world” and not his. You have little knowledge of Indian culture or the caste system and are unsure whether the issue at hand is a matter of controlling parents dealing with a life transition issue or a serious conflict involving social and cultural influences.

Case Study #2

Nicole and Julia explain to you that their relationship has felt strained lately and that they fear they are heading for a breakup. The couple explain to you that they have been in a long-term, non-monogamous relationship, but that lately, Nicole has expressed desire to change this practice. Julia feels that Nicole is “changing the rules halfway through the game” and that her sexual relationships with others are of no consequence to how she feels about Nicole. Their current relationship practice conflicts with your own personal opinion about the role of monogamy in relationships, and thus you feel conflicted about how to handle the situation.

The Assignment (2–3 pages)

• Identify the case study you chose and describe the ethical issue(s) present in it.
• Explain how you would address each of these issues.
• Justify your response using the appropriate professional Code of Ethics.

Support your Assignment with specific references to all resources used in its preparation. You are asked to provide a reference list for all resources, including those in the resources for this course.

Required Readings

Gurman, A. S. (2010). Clinical casebook of couple therapy. New York, NY: The Guilford Press.

• Chapter 5, “Therapy with a Gay Male Couple: An Unlikely Multisystemic Integration” (pp. 90–110)
• Chapter 13, “Searching for Mutuality: A Feminist/Multicultural Approach to Couple Therapy” (pp. 281–306)

Harway, M., Kadin, S., Gottlieb, M. C., Nutt, R. L., & Celano, M. (2012). Family psychology and systemic approaches: Working effectively in a variety of contexts. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 43(4), 315–327.
Note: You will access this article from the Walden Library databases.

Snyder, D. K., & Halford, W. (2012). Evidence‐based couple therapy: Current status and future directions. Journal of Family Therapy, 34(3), 229–249.
Note: You will access this article from the Walden Library databases.