Ethical issues involved in the assessment process include informed consent, the third party’s involvement, assessment feedback, and cultural competence. When a psychologist does an assessment on a client without explaining to him or her reason for doing so and the procedures it entails, the practitioner may be sued for breaching an informed consent principle, which is fundamental to any health procedure involving human beings. Further, lack of cultural competence may result in misunderstanding between a practitioner and a client, hence disrupt the assessment session. For instance, women from the Arabic community would not wish to stay in an enclosed room with a male client based on their religious beliefs and practices. Therefore, appropriate measurements should be taken to prevent non-compliance arising due to cultural incompetency. The third-party involvement in an assessment process would breach the principle of confidentiality. Therefore, a client may sue a practitioner for exposing his or her assessment procedures or results to a third party. Finally, assessment feedback may become problematic
In the Cooper and Samir case, the latter should consider recipients of results, client welfare and confidentiality as the clinical and ethical issues that would revolve around his release of the results to the client and his guardian. In this case, it was important to have a head CT scan taken to check if the client sustained any serious brain injuries that could be contributing to the symptoms. It would be helpful to involve a psychiatrist in this case to rule out a psychiatric disorder because the client is showing signs and symptoms that are consistent with a psychiatric disorder. For example, he portrayed magical thinking and bizarre ideation which are common with psychiatric illnesses.
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One of the advantages of DSM is that it is more specific since it is updated from time to time as mental disorders get more categorized and detailed. In addition, it incorporates social and cultural issues in formulating a diagnosis which makes it possible to address the issues that the patient is going through wholistically. However, the disadvantage of DSM is that it gives a non-etiological diagnosis which means that it is difficult to account for the symptoms of the patient. Nevertheless, it aids in diagnosis of mental health issues which is important in that it helps in the formulation of the right treatment. In addition, coming up with a diagnosis for a patient makes communication between healthcare practioners easier and helps to avoid misunderstandings. The Ethical and legal issues in the case of Mina include confidentiality, informed consent as her details should be kept confidential and consent is needed before carrying out any assesment of her.
