Ethical Considerations and Mental Health Professional Practice

This essay delves into the ethical considerations and professional practices within the field of mental health. It begins by defining ethical considerations and their importance in guiding professionals to make honest and responsible decisions. The essay outlines the key principles of ethical practices, such as protecting personal information, maintaining integrity, and ensuring equitable access to services, while also addressing common ethical issues in mental health care, including lack of involvement in decision-making, unemployment, and inadequate anti-discrimination measures. Furthermore, the essay explores strategies to minimize mental health disorders, such as adapting work environments, enforcing laws for justice and equity, promoting skill development, and addressing barriers to employment. The essay concludes by emphasizing the significance of regular self-checks and proactive measures to prevent and manage mental health issues in the workplace and beyond.

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Introduction
Ethical considerations refer to the guidelines made purposely to help professionals in
making decisions with honesty and integrity. These codes involve the values in which a business
or an organization should have to ensure there is a good relationship between the employee and
the employer. They also outline the method of approach in which a professional may use to solve
problems which occur in day to day life. These problems may include mental
health/psychological disorder, illness, among others.
This discussion will review the relevant ethical considerations and professional practice
that can be used in mental health. Generally, everybody has mental health, but it takes
malfunctioning of our psychological aspect of life to distinguish between good mental health and
mental illness (Younes, Chollet, Menard, & Melchior, 2015). These aspects include behavioral,
emotional, and physical well-being. Mental illness can be expressed through depression, eating
disorders, use of drugs, and addiction and anxiety, among others.
General Key Principles of Ethical Practices
Australian government set the codes of ethics to all businesses and investments, but the
main target of these codes was the social workers. This is because the workers serve the most
vulnerable people, including those affected by the epidemics, people with long term illness like
cancer, HIV/AIDS, the aged, physically, and mentally challenged (Li, Thornicroft, Yang, &
Chen, 2015). Additionally, those living in marginalized areas, especially places affected by
natural calamities.
One of the most critical vital principles for this ethical practice is to always protect the
personal information of an employee or a client. This is to avoid stigmatizing and bullying from
fellow employees as crucial information may have leaked, which may include the health status or

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the financial breakdown of a particular worker (Ogrodniczuk, Oliffe, Kuhl, & Gross, 2016). This
issue can affect the person involved and can lead to low self-esteem or even depression. It is
always advisable for a professional or a client to have value-based principles which are the core
system of a human being (Lannin, Vogel, Brenner, Abraham , & Heath, 2016). These values
include integrity honestly and competence in exercising the mandate given to them by the office.
Additionally, making a just judgment by reasoning and caring for the people involved.
‘All professionals make mistakes.’ therefore, what is more, important is to learn to acknowledge
the issue and solve it with considerations and humanity. Opportunities and services should be
provided without any discrimination of race, gender, ethnicity, social status, or even economic
status. This means that there should be equitability to resources available in the working area
(LaBarge & Stinson, 2014). The client’s interest or investments interest should always be above
the leader’s attention.
Common Ethical Issues Present On the Mental Health Clients
(Musiat, Goldstone, & Tarrier, 2014)Says that mental health care is conjoined with
culture, ethics, and core values or the morals of life. Culture is the most influential part as it
shapes or determines the value present in an individual. Most of the cultural beliefs set the ethics
such as empathy, sensitivity and more so awareness of the clinical officer to deal with mental
health individuals and how to be effective and be able to provide the best health care (Andersson
& Titov, 2014). REF adds to these by saying that cultural beliefs help clinical practitioners to
make moral judgments on the issues evolving on mental health care.
One of the issues which can cause mental health disorder in a workplace is a lack of
involvement in planning and decision making. This affects the person psychologically as it
creates lack of self-actualization and lowers the self-esteem of the individual. The effect of the

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latter is that the individual loses interest in the job, and this causes absenteeism as a result of
depression or poor health (LaBarge & Stinson, 2014). The quality of work and level of
performance reduces as a result of poor decision making and ineffective planning. There is also
the destruction of an excellent relationship between the staffs and the individual. It brings
bullying that result in conflicts among themselves hence creating in a conducive working
environment. There is also the development of a weak relationship between the worker and the
clients.
Unemployment also plays a significant role in mental health, as it may increase
depression. The latter happens if an individual was employed and later demoted. It brings
dissatisfaction and lowers the ego. The latter may also be a reflection of incompetence in their
work, thus reducing the ability of an individual to perform certain tasks. There is also a lack of
recognition of mental health as a threatening issue in organizations and working places (LaBarge
& Stinson, 2014). Effective implementation of anti-discrimination in the acts of the constitution
is also inadequate in most organizations. This means that people with disabilities are given few
or even no opportunities in the job market since the laws have a fragile mechanism to enforce
policies that favor the affected individual. Lack of rehabilitation or even educative measures to
prevent mental health is also a growing issue in the health sector. This is because, when mental
health is not addressed as a concern that can affect the whole system of the affected individuals,
then it means there will be an increase in the number of people who are victims, as they are not
aware of the disability and the methods used to curb it (Lannin, Vogel, Brenner, Abraham , &
Heath, 2016).

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How to Minimize the Issues Leading To Mental Health Disorders
According to (LaBarge & Stinson, 2014) change in nature of the work can be one of the
solutions to the increased rate of mental health. This is as a result of globalization. The author
argues that due to technology advancement, an individual can be able to cover a large load using
minimal effort, thus reducing overloading of work and pressure. Another solution which can help
to minimize the issue is by the government, ensuring that there is a law that governs full
enforcement of justices and equitability to those people affected. For instance; the latter can be
achieved by providing that they have reduced the social cost of these people so that they can
balance the budgets (LaBarge & Stinson, 2014).
Ensuring that the affected people develop working skills and not paid skill can also be
useful in minimizing the issue of mental problems. The latter is done by providing medical-based
programs, interactive training, well equipped and conducive workshops, and also making the
affected individual share their experiences and their opinions with other people or even the
community (Musiat, Goldstone, & Tarrier, 2014).
Another solution is dealing and overcoming the factors or the barriers that affect the
employment of the affected or even their ability to work. There are several barriers to solving
this problem which include discrimination and stigmatization, penalties due to unavoidable
mistakes, incompetence, inadequate job opportunities, and limited job texture. Inadequate or
even no working experience has also contributed to the challenges, and therefore the social
practitioners should ensure that they provide the affected individuals with education as they
rehabilitate them (Li, Thornicroft, Yang, & Chen, 2015). It is the responsibility of the
government to carry out the procedures on how to prevent, create awareness of the mental

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disorder and come up with a way they can rehabilitate the affected people and reform them to
their normal conditions.
Conclusion
Most cases of mental illness are experienced in the working areas due to several factors
as listed above. Therefore, it is advisable for every individual always to carry out regular
checkouts and note the changes in his/her behaviors so that they can be able to control and
prevent this issue before it breaks to more severe problems.

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References
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