By Rebecca Johnson, Govind Persad, and Dominic Sisti
J Am Acad Psychiatry Law 42:4:469-477 (December 2014)
Abstract
Recent events have revived questions about the circumstances that ought to trigger therapists' duty to warn or protect. There is extensive interstate variation in duty to warn or protect statutes enacted and rulings made in the wake of the California Tarasoff ruling. These duties may be codified in legislative statutes, established in common law through court rulings, or remain unspecified. Furthermore, the duty to warn or protect is not only variable between states but also has been dynamic across time. In this article, we review the implications of this variability and dynamism, focusing on three sets of questions: first, what legal and ethics-related challenges do therapists in each of the three broad categories of states (states that mandate therapists to warn or protect, states that permit therapists to breach confidentiality for warnings but have no mandate, and states that give no guidance) face in handling threats of violence? Second, what training do therapists and other professionals involved in handling violent threats receive, and is this training adequate for the task that these professionals are charged with? Third, how have recent court cases changed the scope of the duty? We conclude by pointing to gaps in the empirical and conceptual scholarship surrounding the duty to warn or protect.
The entire article can be found here.
Welcome to the Nexus of Ethics, Psychology, Morality, Philosophy and Health Care
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Showing posts with label Legal Obligation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Legal Obligation. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 31, 2014
Sunday, April 29, 2012
On campus, debate over civil rights and rape
USA Today
Originally Published April 21, 2012
For months after Kristina Ponischil was raped at a party in
her off-campus apartment, her life at Western Washington University was
hell.
Police wouldn't act, as often happens in college towns with
"he said, she said" accounts of alcohol-influenced student encounters
behind closed doors. Despite a restraining order, she kept running into her
assailant on campus, prompting panic attacks.
Once, the man who'd raped her brushed up against Ponischil
in the bookstore, then smirked.
"I was just constantly worried that I would run into
him again," Ponischil said.
But if the criminal justice system let Ponischil down,Western
Washington did not. When she finally told an administrator what
happened, the school sprang to action, offering her the support she needed.
Perhaps most importantly, the campus judicial system, using a lower standard of
proof than criminal courts, suspended her assailant, removing him from campus
until she graduated in 2009.
(cut)
The college's response wasn't just a moral obligation; it
was also a legal one.
June marks the 40th anniversary of Title IX,
the federal gender-equity law that has made headlines mostly on the sports
pages. But over the last decade or so, through a series of court rulings and
more recently controversial guidance published by Obama administration, Title
IX has shifted onto a different patch of contentious terrain — sexual assault
on college campuses. It is transforming how colleges must respond to
allegations of sexual violence.
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