The psychotherapy service, by its nature, includes processes that need to be handled sensitively, since it deals with people's private feelings, thoughts, beliefs, behaviors and personal problem areas.
In psychotherapy, people's private information While studying sensitive and personal issues such as the experiences of the past that left traces, the healthy structuring of thoughts about the future; A professional service based on scientific sources is given to the person rather than giving a friend advice, mentoring or spiritual counseling. A number of ethical principles have been determined in order to protect the material, moral, physical and emotional sense and to determine the ideal professional standards. These ethical principles are also implemented in psychotherapy service through ethical rules. The effort to protect the rules is also very important. Before examining ethical principles and rules in psychotherapy, it is necessary to know what the meanings of terminology such as ethics, professional ethics, ethical principles, ethical rules are.
What Does Ethics Mean?
p>Ethics is a moral philosophy that reflects on reaching the best of human behavior and being a right person.
Ethics is universal; that is, ethics is shaped according to general human truths, not according to distinctive elements such as language, religion, race, gender, culture. For example, honesty is a universally accepted ethical principle; it does not vary according to a religion, language, race or society.
What Does Professional Ethics Mean?
Professional ethics is
Professional ethics, in short, is the whole of the principles, rules and guidelines on how members of the profession should do their jobs.
What Does Professional Ethical Principles Mean?
Ethical principles are the ideals determined at the highest level in accordance with the standards of the profession and scientific data while performing a profession. Ethical principles determine the general standards that should be achieved and maintained in the profession. may not be possible. The situation that constitutes professionalism in the profession is actually the effort made to provide these principles. For example, mental health professionals have to constantly renew their professional knowledge and seek help and supervision from more experienced specialists when they have difficulties, in accordance with the competence ethical principle, which will be discussed in detail in the rest of the article.
However, sometimes lack of time or information Due to various factors such as not being able to instantly communicate with the source he/she wants, the specialist may not be able to access the information he/she wants whenever he/she needs it, he/she may not be able to receive supervision or he/she may not be able to reach up-to-date information despite all the necessary researches. In such cases, it can be assumed that the expert acts in accordance with ethical principles, since he or she strives to fulfill the principle of competence to the extent possible.
What Does Professional Ethical Rules Mean?
Professional ethical rules are the rules determined in order to fulfill the ethical principles. Ethical rules tell the members of the profession and what should be done while performing the profession in order to reach the standards idealized by the ethical principles. In other words, while honesty is a professional ethical principle, it is a professional ethical rule for mental health professionals to accurately inform their clients about their own educational information.
What are the Ethical Principles in Psychotherapy Service?
Ethical principles have been determined under the headings of "competence, being useful and not harming, responsibility, honesty, respect for human rights and non-discrimination" in order to determine the ideals regarding the appropriate conditions aimed to be achieved in psychotherapy.
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Competence
Mental health professionals must complete the undergraduate and graduate departments required in accordance with the universal and national conditions determined in the field of mental health, competence They are obliged to receive training on psychotherapy techniques and to update their knowledge in these fields in order to obtain Universities are required to have graduated from psychology, psychological counseling departments or to have completed their specialization in psychiatry after graduating from the medical department. They must also complete a master's degree in psychology.
Completing a bachelor's degree, specialty in medicine, master's or doctorate education is a prerequisite for psychotherapy, but it is not sufficient. In order to apply the psychotherapy service, the graduates of these departments must attend the supervision programs after receiving training on the psychotherapy techniques they want to apply and be successful in these programs. they should update. At the same time, they should receive professional counseling under the name of supervision from more competent mental health professionals for their clients who have difficulty in working and think that they cannot be helpful enough. With the supervision received, they should continue their psychotherapy processes with the comments, evaluation and guidance of a more competent mental health professional.
Mental health professionals should work on their areas of competence. If specialists cannot receive supervision support in areas where they do not feel competent and competent, then they should refer their clients to another specialist who is more competent and experienced in this field.
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Being Helpful and Not Doing Harm
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Mental health professionals should carry out their work by selecting the most beneficial practices for their clients in the light of their academic training and psychotherapy training. Received psychotherapy techniques provide mental health professionals with a general framework for working with clients.
Professional mental health professionals use this general framework for clients. they should use it in the most beneficial form for them. In short, rather than a general practice, all techniques should be applied in the most appropriate way to the client and by using the expert's own professional experience. They should be careful to stay away from conditions that may create them. Possible damages include all kinds of material, moral, physical or psychological damages.
For example; If a client who receives psychotherapy service once a week has financial difficulties due to the frequent sessions and is worried about not being able to meet the weekly therapy fees, this may harm the client both financially and emotionally and spiritually, as this will cause the therapeutic process of the client to be interrupted before it is completed. In this case, the mental health professional should come up with a solution to the current financial strain.
If leaving psychotherapy sessions unfinished will cause more harm to the client, then the therapist should determine the frequency of the sessions with the client in order to continue to benefit the client. may consider reducing. Thus, the specialist not only tries not to overwhelm the client financially, but also does not stop following the therapeutic process of the client.
Of course, the example mentioned here is an imperative that every therapist must do when faced with such a situation. is not the situation. It is just an example of how a mental health professional tries to be sensitive to his client. However, if the therapist cannot produce any solution for the client's problems, if the solutions produced are dysfunctional or if the solution ideas cannot be used as a solution, then the specialist should refer the client to another mental health specialist.
Mental health specialists. they should not use their professional status to the detriment of the clients they serve and their relatives. They should take care to use their professional status in a way that will always benefit their clients and their environment. They should not engage in a discourse that will negatively affect them. For example, it is not ethically appropriate for a mental health professional to tell the parent of a child client that he or she has a problem child. Because this discourse includes labeling and judging the child, the child can emotionally harm both the client, his family and the child's close environment. They should not prioritize ideas such as personal benefit.
Experts should not use their knowledge, experience and position to pressure their clients or to persuade them to take therapy by force. In addition, if the client does not want to share information about himself with the specialist during the session, the specialist should not force the client to tell him this information and should not put pressure on the client on an issue that he does not want to work on.
The clients' own lives naturally. There are personal characteristics such as life views, language, religion, culture, ethnicity, political view, and sexual identity that reflect them. These characteristics of the clients who come to receive psychotherapy services may be in a different or even opposite position with the mental health specialist. At this point, mental health professionals should not attempt to judge, criticize or change these characteristics of clients. Experts should not convey their personal views and choices to the client during the psychotherapy process, and they should take an objective stance during the session without being affected by the client's own personal views and choices.
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Responsibility
Mental health professionals should know and apply both their scientific and professional responsibilities towards their clients. Because experts are responsible for the type of psychotherapy service they apply and the results it has.
If there is a possible negative result predicted by the expert in the applied psychotherapy methods, this situation should be shared with the client before the therapy process. to be applied
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