Professional Ethics in Mental Health Care

The health industry needs a real change, and as I have mentioned in my Hashimoto in Men posts, the true and real healing is not being seen in conventional medicine.

There are root causes that are causing not only the body imbalances, but also the emotional and spiritual imbalances.

When we think or talk about mental health care, what comes to our minds? Cognitive therapy, antidepressants, antipsychotics, anxiolytics, or a glass of green juice, juicing therapy, turmeric powder, cognitive conductual therapy, nature work, spiritual work, food inflammation elimination diets, vitamin D, addressing nutritional deficiencies?

Unfortunately, the first one has been the established way to go in the conventional treatment, and the questions will come, is this the real healing way, why not try first the other options?

So when it comes to mental health professionals, where do the ethical dilemmas start?

If mental health professionals are already applying what it is told that it works to mentally heal people and making decisions based on their ethical guidelines, why bother to search for other alternatives and other ethical principles? Simple answer, because that method is not really healing.

Following up, I will share my opinion about the professional ethics in mental health care based on experience.

Written by

Carlos Barraza
June 7, 2022
Mind, Personal Development

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Common ethical issues in mental health care

Mental illness or a spiritual awakening? How to identify real pathologies or find out that emotional distresses are indeed spiritual emergencies and psychosomatic experiences as psychiatrist Stanislav Grof says.

How is the mental health care industry really looking at the problem, or is it an opportunity for healing?

Do we have diseases or do we have signs of healing?

Why instantly label someone with mental illness if there might have been factors that were not considered before.

We are all ignorant of something, and even if we consider ourselves experts in a certain topic, there might be paradigms that we actually consider as truth, until it is shown the opposite.

At each point, health care professionals are starting to deal with ethical issues. What is the right thing to do?

So, when there are people threatening their life, what should a health professional do? Stop someone commiting suicide, or let the person try to do it, or it is just a call for help or attention by saying that he or she will commit suicide?

Should a mental health professional guide himself by ethical guidelines established, or by the signs of depression or anxiety or any altered state of consciousness the patient is showing.

Or would it be ethical by a health profession to give someone the idea to treat himself or treat others, in order to take the person to a mental health care clinic since that is the procedure of the ethics code established in the organization?

When people are in an altered state of consciousness, it is unexplainable from outsiders to understand what is happening. So the ethical dilemma comes again, what to do?

When a patient with an altered state of consciousness comes to a clinical mental health organization, the health care professionals will immediately try to find out what is happening and they will seek for the mental illness, label the patient and start the conventional treatment process, but is this the right thing to do, or it is done this way because the industry has established this process and ethical guidelines?

The issue comes when the mental health professionals have to deal with which ethical principles should be followed.

And no wonder, little has been really and properly established on what to do when someone with an apparently mental illness is out of the world and terrain senses.

Why is ethics important in mental health?

We are talking about a person’s mental state, and his or her future, and the perspective of healing, as simple as that is why ethics is important in mental health.

And we are not just talking about confidentiality, but the decision that should be taken by the patient.

People who have undergone spiritual emergencies and have gone through the path of their own healing, of becoming their own real health advocates, who become aware that their health is their own responsibility and what doctors say is not carved in stone, are the ones that are showing real healing in mental health.

And when the patient is in an altered state of consciousness, then give the proper time for coming back to the terrain world, keep up his or her play, give him ground and heavy foods like potatoes and meat, and the person will lower his senses.

This must be understood by the community mental health, ego should be set aside, and mental health professionals must be aware that they are guides, not decision takers.

Here we go back to the principle of autonomy. Where is the autonomy, the doctor is dictating without further discussion with the patient?

Ethics should be fully restored based on the main ethical principles and there must be established a new process in the mental health organizations.

We are already seeing worldwide organizations who are finding out true healing paths that can bring people from their breakdowns to breakthroughs.

Ethical Principles in Mental Health Care

Ethics according to the Oxford Languages is the moral principles that govern a person’s behavior or the conduct of an activity.

Moral according to the Merriem Webster dictionary is the relating to principles of right and wrong in behavior.

The main 4 ethical principles in medicine are beneficence, nonmaleficence, autonomy, and justice.

So what is the right or wrong thing to do from a medical perspective?

How are mental health counselors, doctors, nurses establishing what to do?

Are there decisions pre-established of what is the right thing to do? But, if every person is unique in the sense of body form, then why should the pre-established ethical guidelines should be directed to all, and not in an individual form.

The goal of medicine is to guide a person to heal, or am I wrong?

Medicine or medicaments don’t heal the person, and that must be a starting point for any medical treatment. The one who makes the healing is the body, the mind and the spirit.

Yes, medicaments, will alleviate the symptoms, but not necessarily address the root causes of what is generating a person’s worldly mental imbalance.

If the medical industry keeps seeing medicaments and new pills as the right solution, then the ethical principles are being biased since the beginning.

As being read in stories of ethics and mental health by the American Medical Association, there are ethical positions where nurses and mental health professionals are setting as the right path and right thing to do to give medications and to talk about the symptoms.

But the stories are not showing if they are also analyzing further details of the body, mind, soul conditions. Doctors, at least in the story, are not questioning or seeking root causes, but just pointing to symptoms.

And here are some of the main recommendations for the health industry in general.