Confidentiality Violation

3400 Words7 Pages

Approximately 1.2 million people in the United States are infected with HIV, and almost 1 in 7 people are unaware of their infection (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2015). Those who are HIV positive are often ostracized, stigmatized, and discriminated against. They also have to face the day to day fear of one day possibly being diagnosed with AIDS. Counselors will one day come into contact with a client who has the HIV/AIDS virus and a lot of ethical issues pertaining to confidentiality, the duty to warn, and the duty to protect may arise when dealing with someone who has the HIV/AIDS virus. This paper will discuss the challenges of maintaining confidentiality when there is a duty to warn and a duty to protect faced by counselors …show more content…

Poddar confided in his counselor Dr. Moore his urges to want to kill Tatiana Tarasoff when she returned from a trip in Brazil. Dr. Moore sent a letter to the campus police requesting them to take Poddar to a psychiatric hospital for observation. The campus police interviewed Mr. Poddar, but he proved to be rational so they released him on the promise that he would stay away from Ms. Tarasoff. Later Dr. Moore’s supervisor called the campus police and requested that the letter be returned and ordered the letter and Dr. Moore’s case notes be destroyed with no further action taken. Shortly after Tatiana returned home from her trip in Brazil, Poddar killed her. The parents of Tatiana sued the campus police, Health Service employees, and Regents of the University of California for failing to warn them that their daughter was in danger. The trial court dismissed the case because it said there was no cause of …show more content…

Duty to protect involves working with clients who are a threat to themselves or others. The obligation of duty to protect differs for each state. If your state law permits for you as a counselor to warn or protect third parties’ you should always consider treatment as the first option. These laws do not require that the counselor make a call to the intended victim and to the police the moment a client discloses information confessing their desire to harm someone else. We are to conduct a thorough risk assessment, address these issues in the treatment plan, and work to address underlying issues, in an effort to prevent the harm from occurring, and to prevent the need to breech confidentiality (Barnett,

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