Suicide Malpractice
Psychology In Seattle Podcast
Kirk Honda
4.5 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 18 May 2026
⏱️ 4 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/KIRK to get 10% off your first month.
00:00 Intro03:26 Is it ADHD?
14:41 Case overview
26:06 The ambiguity of mandated reporting
1:03:53 What should be in a suicide risk assessment?
1:36:08 What is informed refusal of care?
1:43:51 Should the counselor have been liable?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, deserving listeners. So I have another ethics case from my malpractice insurance that I want to go over. |
| 0:07.8 | And this malpractice case is a little different from the others because, you know, usually with these case briefings, I am marveling at just how incompetent the therapist is. |
| 0:28.3 | You know, usually it's like there's several instances in several domains indicating that the counselor does not know what they're doing and is just either winging it or poorly trained or narcissistic |
| 0:36.0 | or, I don't know, something's wrong with this counselor. |
| 0:39.0 | But in this case, it doesn't look that way to me. |
| 0:42.4 | In fact, so the counselor was successfully sued for a lot of money, actually. |
| 0:47.3 | Usually these cases result in pretty low payouts, you know, on the order of $30,000, $50,000, this kind of thing. |
| 0:55.5 | But this one is almost a million dollars that the counselor was sued for. |
| 1:00.6 | And I, in this case, I do see incompetence in the counselor. |
| 1:06.7 | But in my anecdotal experience, most, you know, I would say the vast majority of counselors |
| 1:13.1 | have this incompetence. |
| 1:16.4 | And I, so, you know, it's different in that way. |
| 1:19.8 | Usually in these case readings, the incompetence is rare. |
| 1:24.0 | It's, you know, something I've seen before. |
| 1:26.0 | And there are signs of it even anecdotally around me, |
| 1:29.9 | but not to the degree that I'm hearing in the case. But in this case, the vast majority of |
| 1:36.6 | counselors around me that I interact with or train or work with, I find even when I'm, even when I'm |
| 1:43.8 | the supervisor and I'm really trying to get them not to have this incompetence, I find that they still do. So that's, that's a difference. The other thing is that I don't know if the resolution of this case was fair. I don't know if I were to be hired on a case. You know, I don't know the details because they're only giving the summary. |
| 2:03.3 | But, you know, I think if I'm reading between the lines accurately, which I can never know, |
| 2:08.8 | if I were to be hired, I think that I would have had a more nuanced take. |
| 2:14.6 | I think I would have defended the counselor a little bit more. Not for the |
| 2:19.9 | incompetence, but for the liability. You know, there's a difference between a counselor exhibiting |
... |
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