Hey, discerned listeners. I thought I would present an ethics and legal case that I received from my malpractice insurance, HBSO, and CNA.

And I thought I would review it, and we could evaluate it. So let's get into it. My name is Dr. Kirk Honda. I'm a therapist and a professor. And again, this is a case study sent out by my malpractice as a case example for insured counselors to read so that they could avoid running into the same problems. So I'm reading a somewhat paraphrased version of the case brief. The insured counselor,

so the person who was complained against, is a licensed professional counselor or LPC. And it is a

woman. The counselor is a woman. And the counselor has been practicing for more than 15 years in private practice. So not someone who is a novice, but in private practice, sometimes for us counselors, us therapists, we can have a hard time staying up to date on the ethics and on the standards

of practice because we're kind of isolated, that kind of thing. But I don't know the situation

with this counselor. So let's go on with the case briefing. The clients involved in the complaint

were a husband and wife who sought counseling for marriage.

And the LPC, the counselor, upon the first session recommended joint sessions, obviously

couples counseling, but also individual therapy sessions to augment the marriage counseling.

So the clients agreed that they would meet jointly and separately with the therapist,

and informed consent was obtained. Sometimes in these case briefings, we learned that the therapist didn't even do

informed consent, didn't have them sign anything, which is obviously a problem, but it sounds like

that was done. So everything looks on the up and up. Some of you might be thinking, wait,

can a counselor both see the couple and the members of the couple individually. And the answer is yes.

For whatever reason, some people in the public and even some counselors will claim that that's

unethical. It's not unethical. It's a common standard in couple therapy to occasionally meet

individually. I will often meet individually with couples,

particularly high conflict couples. I will meet, I will alternate individual sessions with

couple sessions. You know, I'll meet with the couple one week and then the next week I'll meet

with each of them individually and then the next week I'll meet with each of them individually and then the next week

I'll meet with them as a couple, this sort of thing. And I find that I can accelerate therapy

with that model with some clients because if I'm meeting individually with them, I can get them

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