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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Duty To Warn And Protect, George T. Williams, Lori L. Ellison
Duty To Warn And Protect, George T. Williams, Lori L. Ellison
Lori L. Ellison
Professional counselors, spurred by the courts, have a dual ethical and legal responsibility to protect others from potentially dangerous clients, to protect clients from being harmed by others, and to protect clients from themselves. The delicate balance between confidentiality and the duty to warn and protect others must be handled on a case-by-case basis. The majority of individual state laws require counselors to breach confidentiality in order to warn and protect someone who is in danger. All states and U.S. jurisdictions now have mandatory reporting statutes for suspected physical, sexual, or emotional child abuse or neglect. There are also several …