Should a therapist disclose personal information to a client, accept a
client's gift, or provide a former client with a job? Is it appropriate
to exchange email or text messages with clients or correspond with them
on social networking websites? Some acts, such as initiating a sexual
relationship with a client, are clearly prohibited, yet what about more
subtle interactions, such as hugging or accepting invitations to a
social event? Is maintaining a friendship with a former client or
client's relative a conflict of interest that ultimately subverts the
client-practitioner relationship?
Frederic G. Reamer, a certified authority on professional ethics, offers
a frank analysis of a range of boundary issues and their complex
formulations. He confronts the ethics of intimate and sexual
relationships with clients and former clients, the healthy parameters of
practitioners' self-disclosure, electronic relationships with clients,
the giving and receiving of gifts and favors, the bartering of services,
and the unavoidable and unanticipated circumstances of social encounters
and geographical proximity. With case studies addressing challenges in
the mental health field, school contexts, child welfare, addiction
programs, home-healthcare, elder services, and prison, rural, and
military settings, Reamer offers effective, practical risk-management
models that prevent problems and help balance dual relationships.
