Marriage And Family Therapy Code Of Ethics

The American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy Code of Ethics (AAMFT) and the American Counseling Association Code of Ethics (ACA) are very similar in the sense that both codes of ethics set standardized rules in which a professional should practice, in regards to professionalism in various settings and situations, and the welfare of the client. For instance, in principle 1.3, the AAMFT discourages the therapist from participating in multiple roles due to it being potentially harmful to the client (2012). However, the ACA, in section A.6.b, encourages the role of extending counseling boundaries, such as, attending a ceremony or a client’s football game, as long as it proves to be therapeutic to the client instead of harmful. In this

For example, in the AAMFT, principle 3.9, states “marriage and family therapists do not engage in the exploitation of clients, students, trainees, supervisees, employees, colleagues, or research subjects” (2012). This principle is very reasonable because if for example, a research participant no longer wants to be part of the study, then he or she has the right to eject from the study without running the risk of being exploited by being forced to stay in the study for the benefit of the researcher. AAMFT also covers the issue of exploitation in principle 4.1; this type of exploitation is more so directed to the supervisor negatively affecting his or her supervisees due to the difference in authority (2012); say, purposely instructing the wrong type of information to a supervisee is the exploitation of trust because the authority figure is taking advantage of his or her power over

Typically, in other fields, such as business, people do receive rebates and kickbacks for referring an individual to a specific professional. However, in counseling, I believe this rule may not apply because just because a therapist offers rebates to an individual so he or she can receive more clients, does not mean that the therapist is competent enough or experienced in the different aspects of counseling to provide a counseling services to a variety of clients. Therefore, it is understandable that offering remunerations for referrals is unethical because in the long-run the client is being harmed by turning the therapeutic relationship into a profiting business. In addition, current clients could potentially do advertisement that may be correct or incorrect, just to receive monetary rewards; thus, it being unethical due to the potential it has to cause a never-ending cycle of