Ethical Issues Involved in the Dual Role of Treater and Evaluator

Abstract

use the still embryonic professional ethical guidelines which are relevant to forensic practice to analyze the question of the potential for dual agency inherent in combining the treatment and evaluation roles from a number of aspects, and attempt to differentiate those situations in which treating psychiatrists should avoid providing expert testimony about their patients from those in which such activities are appropriate and even preferred private versus public practice / civil versus criminal practice / type of treatment involved the order of assumption of the roles / treaters as decision makers / explicit duties to warn or to protect [duty to protect third parties, duty to report child abuse, duty to report sexual abuse by previous therapists, prosecution of mental patients] advantages of combining treating and evaluating / separation of treatment from evaluation / warnings to patients at the beginning of a relationship (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: chapter)