Description

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Risk Management in the Behavioral Health Professions is a comprehensive handbook for mental health and social service providers on prevention of malpractice lawsuits and licensing-board complaints. Frederic G. Reamer draws on his extensive firsthand experience as an expert witness in litigation and licensing-board cases throughout the United States to give readers an insider's view of practical risk-management strategies. He provides in-depth discussion of common risk areas and steps practitioners can take to protect clients and themselves.

Key topics include confidentiality and privileged communication; service delivery, including informed consent, assessment, boundary issues, suicide risk management, and use of technology; impaired practitioners; supervision and consultation; documentation; deception and fraud; and interruption and termination of services. Reamer offers pragmatic advice about how to respond to a lawsuit or licensing-board complaint. He emphasizes the challenges and risks related to remote service provision, especially during public health crises and pandemics. The book includes sample risk-management forms and templates as well as extensive case examples that illustrate fundamental risk-management concepts.

Designed for behavioral health professionals including social workers, psychologists, mental health counselors, marriage and family therapists, psychiatrists, and substance use disorder treatment counselors, this book is an indispensable resource on how to navigate challenging ethics and risk-management issues.

About the Author

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Frederic G. Reamer is professor in the School of Social Work at Rhode Island College. He chaired the national task force that wrote the National Association of Social Workers Code of Ethics and served on the code revision task force. His recent Columbia University Press books include The Philosophical Foundations of Social Work (second edition, 2022), Boundary Issues and Dual Relationships in the Human Services (third edition, 2020), Social Work Values and Ethics (fifth edition, 2018), and On the Parole Board: Reflections on Crime, Punishment, Redemption, and Justice (2016). Robert P. Landau is an attorney at the law firm of Roberts, Carroll, Feldstein & Peirce, Inc., in Providence, Rhode Island. He has decades of experience defending behavioral health providers, including social workers, psychologists, mental health counselors, marriage and family therapists, chemical dependency professionals, psychiatric nurses, and psychiatrists as well as hospitals, physicians, nurses, and other health-care providers in malpractice lawsuits and disciplinary proceedings.