Legal Decision A. Post a brief description of the legal decision you selected. Then, explain how it informs the practice of clinical mental health counseling. Be specific and provide examples. Ethical Standards and Laws / The Code of Ethics were developed and published by the American Counseling Association (ACA) (2005) as a set of principles that governs the practice of the counseling professions (Linde, L. E., & Erford, B. T. (2014). Ethical Standards and Laws also serve as noted guidelines that are solely based on principals to educate all members of the counseling society about the sound ethical conducts that should be practiced daily to do no harm to the client (Herlihy and Corey, 2006). These ethical standards and laws imply to five moral principles to include: Justice, Beneficence, Autonomy, Nonmaleficence and Fidelity (Linde, L. E., & Erford, B. T. (2014). In the practice of clinical mental health counseling these five moral principals must be the sole obligation of the counselor to be effective in making sound legal decisions to administer the proper therapy to bring about a positive outcome within the client's treatment protocol. These five moral principals as stated previously …show more content…
In the counseling profession “justice” plays a key factor in making sound legal decisions because it entails the counselor to treat each client with respect and fairness in accordance with the Code of Ethics and according to each client’s needs. According to the American Counseling Association (2014), the concept of justice implies that all counselors should never discriminate on the basis of race, socioeconomic status, gender, sexual orientation, or any other factors that would discriminate against the client’s needs in receiving the proper treatment based solely on making the proper legal decisions based on each individual