W11T2 Ethical Issues Faced in Psychological Careers

I’d like to write about a career as a psychologist or therapist of mental health, because, in reality, I am fascinated by the psychological approach in other disciplines, such as statistical research, advertising and, most importantly, engineering design (including engineering system design and product design).

 

A mental health therapist’s job is simply treating patients with mental problems. Such mental problems could be as common as insomnia, or as serious as depression. Mostly, these kinds of diseases will not take people’s life, but will result in a really tough life (much tougher than NUS engineering students’). Usually, for any kind of mental disease, the patient and the doctor need to come to close contact for a span of a few months. As a normal practice, both of them will meet once a week or two weeks. In order to help the patient overcome his/her mental problem, comprehensive, deep conversations are needed. This is where the ethical problem comes out. The patient needs to “confess” everything to the doctor. Therefore, the doctor may be able to use his psychological knowledge to think of a way to prevent the patient’s condition from getting worse, and eventually overcome the problem. Here, it is essential for a doctor to be loyal to his profession. A responsible mental therapist will base all his diagnoses on the patient’s good, strictly, with no consideration of his own preferences of every perspective. Since this is impossible to restrict every doctor to following this kind of principle, in some cases, violation of ethics might happen. The only solution, in my opinion, lies in the previous education of such therapists and psychologists. In the colleges or universities, courses for psychology (and maybe sociology) majors should be carefully designed. A considerably amount of ethical education is vital in their four years’ study before they are able to go out and do practice work.