PRESENTER: Ronald Mah, Ph.D,  LFMT

Course meets the qualifications for 3 hours of continuing education credit for LMFTs, LCSWs, LPCCs and/or LEPs as required by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences.  Registrants must attend the full 3 hours to receive CEs..

From Personal & Moral to Ethical & Legal; and Areas of Therapist Violations.

A legal and Ethical Seminar addressing client types and issues and clinician personality and counter-transference leading to boundary violations. The educational goal of this training course is to provide 3 hours of law and ethics training, as required for license renewal by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences, Education, Knowledge, and Training in graduate programs and Law & Ethics seminars every license cycle inform the therapist of the 'what of legal and ethical boundaries and violations, but do not necessarily address the client and therapist 'whys' of how a therapist comes to make errors anyway. The workshops enable therapist to merge clinical knowledge and experience with identifying sound legal and ethical practice.

Who messes you up (including who is most likely to elicit an ethical or legal breach and who is mostly likely to make a complaint).

How you screw up anyway (despite knowing better).

Education, Knowledge, and Training in graduate programs and Law & Ethics seminars every license cycle inform the therapist of the "what" of legal and ethical boundaries and violations, but does not necessarily address the client and therapist "whys" of how a therapist comes to make errors anyway.

There are clients that are immediately perceived as potentially problematic, while others surprise, and even ambush a therapist.

Certain clinical situations are relatively straightforward while others are littered with not only therapeutic but also legal and ethical land mines.

Sometimes knowing or getting clarification regarding legal and ethical requirements and guidelines, instead of giving a therapist confidence, it makes him/her more uncomfortable or anxious. That is probably an indication of a vulnerability that may play out subsequently in a legal or ethical quandary breach or mistake.

This seminar will use case vignettes derived from published cases of BSE and Psychology Board disciplinary actions, CAMFT Therapist journal articles, and from experiences of the presenter (including his participation on the Ethic Board of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists - CAMFT) to examine Legal and Ethical issues and boundaries, the client behaviors, issues, seductions, and circumstances; the presenting issues and configurations in therapy; and the personal issues and vulnerabilities of therapists that combine to increase the probability of legal and ethical violations in therapy. In the small group format of the seminar, participants will be encouraged to interact and offer their own experiences, both for consultation and for enhancing the breadth and depth of the seminar's goal to help therapists be more clear and secure dealing with legal and ethical issues as they practice.

Topics to be included:

Legal and Ethical Issues for psychotherapists

Client presentations (personality disorders, abuse survivors, sexualizing therapy, neediness, etc.)

Legally and ethically challenging issues (letters, custodial disputes, mandated counseling, etc.), therapy configurations (family, couples, parents and children or teens, etc.).

Professional practices (insurance, billing, debts), and

Therapist vulnerabilities (ignorance, arrogance, being the "gallant knight: or rescuer, being "special", relational self- medication, etc.).

OBJECTIVES:

After the presentation the audience will be able to:

1) Identify and describe the 9 categories of therapeutic boundary violations.
2) Identify 5 common client presentations that tens risk ethical and legal problems.
3) Identify 5 common therapy situations that tend to risk ethical and legal problems.

ABOUT THE PRESENTER:

Ronald Mah, LMFT has a successful private practice (including many adolescents and young children, families and couple) having successfully marketed himself primarily through the use of workshop presentations (presentations no available on dvds; currently working with a publishing company on a new book). He teaches MFT trainings at the Western Institute for Social Research in Berkeley. He has served on the Ethics Board of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapist for the last four years. No confidential information from this experience on the Ethics Board will be shared, however he will offer insights from reviewing and the decision making process at they pertain to therapist and client issues in legal and ethical violations.

Inland Empire Chapter of CAMFT is approved by the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists to sponsor continuing education for LMFTs, LCSWs, LPCCS, AND/or LEPs. IE-CAMFT maintains responsibility for this program/course and its content. CE Provider # 62278