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Chapter One
Legal and Ethical Issues Affecting Counseling
Psychologists
JAMES L. WERTH JR.
DEVON L. CUMMINGS
MINDI N. THOMPSON
Many ethical and legal developments have affected the practice, research, and education of counseling
psychologists since Kitchener and Anderson's (2000) chapter was written for the previous edition of
the Handbook. Most notably, the American Psychological Association (APA, 2002) revised its Ethical
Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct (Ethics Code). In addition, the implications of laws
such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) are significant. Further, such
professional issues as competence and impairment have received widespread attention in psychology.
This chapter provides an overview of a selected set of legal and ethical issues currently affecting counseling
psychologists. We focus primarily on developments since the previous edition of the Handbook,
but for the sake of comprehensiveness, we include reviews of areas that have continuing relevance.
We first discuss fundamental risk management considerations that psychologists or tr ... read full excerpt from Handbook of Counseling Psychology ebook
