When Laws and Ethics Conflict: Civil Disobedience, Social Justice, and Our Role as Therapists
Curt and Katie chat about what happens when legal requirements clash with ethical responsibilities—and how therapists can stay grounded in their values while navigating complex decisions. When you find yourself in a situation where the law seems to contradict your ethics, or even violate your clients’ basic human rights, what do you do? In this deep-dive episode, we explore the tension between law and ethics and the moral courage required to practice in alignment with your values. From post-9/11 changes in APA’s ethics code to current issues like gender-affirming care restrictions, we explore real-world implications and guide you through a framework for ethical decision-making in the face of legal and systemic challenges. This is a continuing education podcourse.
Click here to scroll to the podcast transcript.Transcript
(Show notes provided in collaboration with Otter.ai and ChatGPT.)
In this podcast episode we talk about laws, ethics, and the difficult decisions therapists face in practice
Executive orders and nationwide proposed legislative bills that affect mental health have left therapists wondering, “Will my ethics protect me?” This episode and podcourse explores the interplay between laws and ethics, how professional organizations guide therapists when laws and ethics collide and gives a framework for how therapists should proceed. Participants will learn how to identify potential conflicts, understand their legal and ethical obligations, and develop effective decision-making processes. Topics explored will include risk management strategies, consultation best practices, and documentation considerations in conflictual situations.
“What we’re setting out…to talk about some of the ways that laws and ethics interplay with each other…Some historical changes where it has come up with human rights, as far as what level of respect and what level of decision making therapists should go into when looking at the conflicts between law and ethics…[We’ll] give you some directions on some decision making process…if you’re participating in civil disobedience, or [to use] in general, when laws and ethics do conflict, because there may even be aspects within your practice, individually with clients, where this might start to emerge.” – Curt Widhalm, LMFT
How do Modern Therapists navigate Ethics vs. Law in our practices?
- Where clinical ethics and legal obligations collide
- How our ethical codes approach this conflict (APA, ACA, NASW, CAMFT)
- The importance of understanding your responsibilities beyond compliance
Civil Disobedience as Therapists out in the world and in our offices
- Philosophical roots: Antigone, Nuremberg, and post-9/11 ethics reform
- When following the law may cause harm to clients or communities
- How to protect your license while still honoring human rights
Real-Life Legal versus Ethical Dilemmas for Modern Therapists
- What to do when reporting requirements might increase harm
- How to support trans and gender-diverse clients in states with discriminatory laws
- Navigating confidentiality, documentation, and advocacy
A Therapist’s Decision-Making Process for Civil Disobedience
- Seek consultation to understand your legal requirements (know what the law is actually asking you to do, even if that means taking the time to consult with an attorney)
- Clearly understand your ethical obligations (read the language of the ethics code and consult with trusted colleagues)
- Consider alternatives that allow following the law while upholding your values
- Contemplate violating the law only if no viable alternatives exist, and if so, limit disobedience to the minimum necessary to fulfill the higher goal
“I think we are going to have to rely on our own judgment and the consultation with colleagues and attorneys to be able to determine whether or not we follow the laws around complying with court orders.” – Katie Vernoy, LMFT
Receive Continuing Education for this Episode of the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide
Hey modern therapists, we’re so excited to offer the opportunity for 1 unit of continuing education for this podcast episode – Therapy Reimagined is bringing you the Modern Therapist Learning Community!
Once you’ve listened to this episode, to get CE credit you just need to go to https://learn.moderntherapistcommunity.com/pages/podcourse, register for your free profile, purchase this course, pass the post-test, and complete the evaluation! Once that’s all completed – you’ll get a CE certificate in your profile or you can download it for your records. For our current list of CE approvals, check out moderntherapistcommunity.com.
You can find this full course (including handouts and resources) here: https://learn.moderntherapistcommunity.com/courses/when-laws-and-ethics-conflict-civil-disobedience-social-justice-and-our-role-as-therapists
Continuing Education Approvals:
When we are airing this podcast episode, we have the following CE approval. Please check back as we add other approval bodies: Continuing Education Information including grievance and refund policies.
CAMFT CEPA: Therapy Reimagined is approved by the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists to sponsor continuing education for LMFTs, LPCCs, LCSWs, and LEPs (CAMFT CEPA provider #132270). Therapy Reimagined maintains responsibility for this program and its content. Courses meet the qualifications for the listed hours of continuing education credit for LMFTs, LCSWs, LPCCs, and/or LEPs as required by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences. We are working on additional provider approvals, but solely are able to provide CAMFT CEs at this time. Please check with your licensing body to ensure that they will accept this as an equivalent learning credit.
Resources for Modern Therapists mentioned in this Podcast Episode:
We’ve pulled together resources mentioned in this episode and put together some handy-dandy links. Please note that some of the links below may be affiliate links, so if you purchase after clicking below, we may get a little bit of cash in our pockets. We thank you in advance!
Board of Behavioral Sciences: Criminal Convictions
National Immigration Law Center: Health Care Providers and Immigration Enforcement: Know Your Rights, Know Your Patients’ Rights
References mentioned in this continuing education podcast:
American Counseling Association. (2014). American Counseling Association Code of Ethics.
American Psychological Association. (2017). Ethical principles of psychologists and code of conduct (2002, amended effective June 1, 2010, and January 1, 2017). https://www.apa.org/ethics/code/
American Psychological Association. (2023, February 14). Psychologists should keep patients’ reproductive health decisions confidential. American Psychological Association. https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2023/02/reproductive-health-decisions-confidential
California Association of Marriage & Family Therapists. (2019). CAMFT Code of Ethics
Flynn, A. W., Domínguez Jr, S., Jordan, R., Dyer, R. L., & Young, E. I. (2021). When the political is professional: Civil disobedience in psychology. American Psychologist, 76(8), 1217.
Knapp, S., Gottlieb, M., Berman, J., & Handelsman, M. M. (2007). When laws and ethics collide: What should psychologists do? Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 38(1), 54–59. https://doi.org/10.1037/0735-7028.38.1.54
National Association of Social Workers (NASW). (2021). National Association of Social Workers Code of Ethics. https://www.socialworkers.org/About/Ethics/Code-of-Ethics/Code-of-Ethics-English
Pope, K.S. (2011). Are the American Psychological Association’s Detainee Interrogation Policies Ethical and Effective?: Key Claims, Documents, and Results. Z Psychol;219(3):150-158. doi: 10.1027/2151-2604/a000062. PMID: 22096660; PMCID: PMC3200196.
Sophocles. (2014). Antigone. (S. Ruden, Trans.). Yale University Press. (Original work written c. 451 BCE)
*The full reference list can be found in the course on our learning platform.
Relevant Episodes of MTSG Podcast:
It’s the Lack of Thought That Counts: Ethical Decision Making in Dual Relationships
Decolonizing Therapy: A Movement – An Interview with Dr. Jennifer Mullan
Therapy as a Political Act: An Interview with Dr. Travis Heath
How Much Autonomy Do Therapy Clients Deserve? Balancing client autonomy with therapist skill
Stop Wasting Your Time on Awareness Campaigns
What Therapists Need to Know to Support the Trans Community: An interview with Artie Hartsell
What Therapists Need to Know About Immigration: An interview with Andy Strait
Reacting to Regime Change: How Therapists Can Advocate for our Clients and Communities
How Can Therapists Help Politically Divided Families? : An interview with Angela Caldwell, LMFT
Who we are:
Curt Widhalm, LMFT
Curt Widhalm is in private practice in the Los Angeles area. He is the cofounder of the Therapy Reimagined conference, an Adjunct Professor at Pepperdine University and CSUN, a former Subject Matter Expert for the California Board of Behavioral Sciences, former CFO of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, and a loving husband and father. He is 1/2 great person, 1/2 provocateur, and 1/2 geek, in that order. He dabbles in the dark art of making “dad jokes” and usually has a half-empty cup of coffee somewhere nearby. Learn more at: http://www.curtwidhalm.com
Katie Vernoy, LMFT
Katie Vernoy is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, coach, and consultant supporting leaders, visionaries, executives, and helping professionals to create sustainable careers. Katie, with Curt, has developed workshops and a conference, Therapy Reimagined, to support therapists navigating through the modern challenges of this profession. Katie is also a former President of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists. In her spare time, Katie is secretly siphoning off Curt’s youthful energy, so that she can take over the world. Learn more at: http://www.katievernoy.com
A Quick Note:
Our opinions are our own. We are only speaking for ourselves – except when we speak for each other, or over each other. We’re working on it.
Our guests are also only speaking for themselves and have their own opinions. We aren’t trying to take their voice, and no one speaks for us either. Mostly because they don’t want to, but hey.
Stay in Touch with Curt, Katie, and the whole Therapy Reimagined #TherapyMovement:
Consultation services with Curt Widhalm or Katie Vernoy:
Connect with the Modern Therapist Community:
Our Facebook Group – The Modern Therapists Group
Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide Creative Credits:
Voice Over by DW McCann https://www.facebook.com/McCannDW/
Music by Crystal Grooms Mangano https://groomsymusic.com/
Transcript for this episode of the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide podcast (Autogenerated):
Transcripts do not include advertisements just a reference to the advertising break (as such timing does not account for advertisements).
… 0:00
(Opening Advertisement)
Curt Widhalm 0:00
Hey, modern therapists, we’re so excited to offer the opportunity for one unit of continuing education for this podcast episode. Once you’ve listened to this episode, to get CE credit, you just need to go to moderntherapistcommunity.com, register for your free profile, purchase this course, pass the post test and complete the evaluation. Once that’s all completed, you’ll get a CE certificate in your profile, or you can download it for your records. For a current list of our CE approvals, check out moderntherapistcommunity.com.
Katie Vernoy 0:32
Once again, hop over to moderntherapistcommunity.com for one CE once you’ve listened. Woo hoo!
Announcer 0:38
You’re listening to the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide, where therapists live, breathe and practice as human beings. to support you as a whole person and a therapist, here are your hosts, Curt Widhalm and Katie Vernoy.
Curt Widhalm 0:54
Welcome back, modern therapists. This is the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide. I’m Curt Widhalm with Katie Vernoy, and this is the podcast for therapists about the things that go on in our practice, things that happen about our profession, and this is another one of our continuing education eligible episodes. So look in our show notes at mtsgpodcast.com, follow directions on the intro and outro of the show if you are interested in getting continuing education for listening to your favorite podcast hosts, and if those podcast hosts are not us, talk to them about them getting continuing education approval, but…
Katie Vernoy 1:39
Oh, you’re so weird this morning.
Curt Widhalm 1:42
We have not had a lot of joy recently in many of our episodes, and so that we are starting this one with some humor…
Katie Vernoy 1:56
I don’t think we’re going to continue with humor. It’s still going to be serious. We can’t help ourselves.
Curt Widhalm 2:01
All of the humor that comes in civil disobedience.
Katie Vernoy 2:04
Yes.
Curt Widhalm 2:06
As you’re aware, Katie, there’s laws and there’s ethics, and I spend a lot of time talking about both. And there’s lots of ways that laws and ethics show up in our profession. Some of it is thrown at us in our very first semester of our graduate programs, where I think pretty much all programs require you to take law and ethics from the very beginning, and then we spend many years accusing each other of being unethical about things, whether or not that really just is I don’t like what you’re doing, but I’m claiming that it’s against my ethics, not necessarily the professional ethics. There’s jurisprudence exams in many areas. There’s law and ethics exams, depending on where you’re located. And then there’s continuing education classes that we have to continue using each of our license renewals in order to be able to renew our licenses. There’s also rules around continuing education, and one of the things that we have to do when we present you with continuing education workshops, for many of the workshops that we do, lot of continuing education bodies require us to provide you with at least five references that have been published within the last five years in order to make sure that things are current and up to date. Now, I know that for a lot of law and ethics workshops that this is the one exception to this, but in general, Katie and I try to bring you the freshest and most up to date research in this and I don’t particularly always enjoy finding such new references.
Katie Vernoy 3:50
No, it can be pretty challenging, especially if we’re looking at a topic that is not necessarily things that people talk about all the time.
Curt Widhalm 3:59
And in the spirit of this episode, which we’re really focusing on mental health professionals and civil disobedience, I want to share what I do in my own civil disobedience within continuing education, which is, this is a qualifying course. There’s five references from the last five years here, but I also like to throw in the absolute oldest references possible into my workshops. And I think it’s very fitting to start the actual meat of this episode in talking about Antigone, which was published in 451 BCE.
Katie Vernoy 4:36
That has to be the oldest continuing education reference within any course.
Curt Widhalm 4:43
Continue to listen to future courses just to see what else I weave in. But I bring up Antigone as an example maybe we go into some spoiler alerts for anybody who’s not familiar with Antigone and hasn’t come across it in the, the last 2500 ish years. But spoiler alert for Antigone here it is the story about two brothers who are fighting a civil war. One of them ultimately dies. Both of them are Antigone’s brothers. Antigone’s uncle says the surviving brother, actually they both end up getting killed, I think. The victorious brother gets a hero’s burial, while the brother who instigated and challenged the rule of law is supposed to be left out for the animals to devour, and here’s the spoiler Antigone goes and buries the brother that is not supposed to get the heroes burial, because she believes that everybody should have the respect to be buried. And this is really one of the very first and longest lasting stories that talks about human law versus divine law. And the ways that this has translated over the last 2600 years is some of the explorations into philosophy and Sophocles does a very good job of thinking our thoughts well before our civilizations existed. So good job there Sophocles. Where this actually does translate into our current world is around civil disobedience and the ways that we as mental health professionals and those of us who are called into social justice type action, look at the ways that laws are going to be either something that impacts us and things that we are supposed to follow. Sometimes, when those laws end up conflicting with things such as human rights. I have seen a lot of discussion over the last several months around when laws are either going against human rights or people even responding to ways that the Trump administration has brought up executive orders that seem to roll back human rights protections. I do see a lot of therapists say or type into internet forums that, well, our ethics codes are here to save us, and a lot of this workshop is really an exploration around: that probably isn’t true.
Katie Vernoy 7:21
But it’s not totally false.
Curt Widhalm 7:23
Correct. What we’re setting out to do in this hour is to be able to talk about some of the ways that laws and ethics interplay with each other. We’re going to talk about some historical changes where it has come up with human rights, as far as what level of respect and what level of decision making therapists should go into when looking at the conflicts between law and ethics. We’re also going to look at ways that ethical codes have changed in order to fall into compliance with the laws, and give you some directions on some decision making process, as far as if you are considering breaking the law, how that might impact your licensure when you’re engaged in civil disobedience. This is not a free for all, go and participate in the purge and do whatever crimes necessary. This is more if you’re participating in civil disobedience, or in general, when laws and ethics do conflict, because there may even be aspects within your practice, individually with clients, where this might start to emerge. Now we are going to reference a lot of the professional ethics codes. Katie and I are both members of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists ethics committee. We are not speaking for them. We are speaking as podcast hosts who have a background in reading a lot of law and ethics stuff. But Katie, you had initially sent me a list of questions to kind of formulate some ideas when we first started talking about this. Where do you want to jump in first?
Katie Vernoy 9:05
Let’s start from pretending that it’s normal times and someone is considering breaking the law, and it’s…
Curt Widhalm 9:18
Breaking the law, breaking the law.
Katie Vernoy 9:21
And it’s something where they decide to break the law, or they haphazardly break the law. You know, we see a lot of those things in what we used to call the spider pages, where therapists get DUIs driving under the influence, or DWI driving while intoxicated, and so they’ve broken a law. And so let’s start with under normal circumstances, what happens when someone breaks the law and are caught?
Curt Widhalm 9:47
So I’m gonna speak from my knowledge about the California systems. And if you’re one of the wonderful listeners who’s listening from a place that isn’t California, there’s usually a lot of similarities between boards, but, your miles may vary depending on your jurisdiction, or if you’re in a country that uses the proper metric system, your kilometers may vary. So in many jurisdictions, you have a responsibility to notify your board when you have been convicted of a crime. And in California, there’s an FAQ page that we’ll include in our references about what happens around criminal convictions. And as far as the California BBS is concerned, that there might be times where somebody is arrested, such as in civil disobedience, where a lot of times law enforcement will arrest protesters in mass. People will spend a night in jail. People a lot of times unless they’re instigating rioting, creating vandalism and others such raucous behavior, they tend to get released without being charged with anything. If you are not convicted of something, according to the California BBS, BBS doesn’t have any responsibility or any enforceable actions against you because you have not been convicted of a crime, and specifically around crimes that are substantially related to the qualifications functions or duties of the business or profession that somebody is licensed or registered to. So there is a little bit of carve out here in that there are theoretically some crimes that people can be arrested for and convicted for that have nothing to do with the professions and qualifications of a mental health professional. Do those boards list what those crimes are? Absolutely not.
Katie Vernoy 11:48
Sure. If someone is arrested or convicted of a crime that’s not related to being a therapist, theoretically, the board doesn’t need to do anything with it or just kind of keep up, pays attention. If someone is arrested for something that is related to them being a therapist and convicted of that crime what typically happens? I’ve I’ve seen some sort of probation, it could be some sort of kind of corrective action, that kind of stuff. What have you seen in looking at these things?
Curt Widhalm 12:17
Typically, those kinds of convictions go through a board disciplinary process. A lot of times, it’ll appear before an administrative judge that is knowledgeable about the nuances of both the profession and the law and its history and how those laws came about and are applied. So it’s not just the letter of the law, but it’s also the history of the law, where some of this process is made. And so a lot of times, what we’ll end up seeing is people who have criminal convictions well before they ended up pursuing graduate school en route to licensure, that people weren’t necessarily under the jurisdiction of a licensing board yet, that will still end up having to go through a disciplinary process. A lot of times, what ends up happening is there’s a probationary period. There’s sometimes probation monitoring fees that get assigned. Sometimes there’s assignments around having your practice supervised, and this all depends on the severity of the law and how long ago that that law was broken. Sometimes boards are going to look for some kinds of acts of restitution and apology towards the crimes that are being given to, so there’s a wide variety of cases and some clients in the future Katie and I have a episode that we’re trying to work around, where sometimes when the board says how long ago a crime was, means way different than what the words mean. So listen for a future episode on that.
Katie Vernoy 13:58
Yeah, we have a future episode on that, and potentially even how all of this works, we may have an episode on an opinion about it. And there are times when the law that you broke and got convicted of a crime means that you lose your license, that it’s surrendered, that you may agree to surrender it, because the…
Curt Widhalm 14:21
…costs and the responses…
Katie Vernoy 14:23
…whatever you have to do that, yeah, that kind of stuff, is too high. And so there are real consequences for breaking laws. Sometimes they’re pretty minimal, sometimes they will be kind of ignored, and sometimes you’ll lose your license. So I think that’s, that’s where I wanted to start, because I wanted to have a framework of what are we framework of what are we actually thinking about? Now, that’s just with your license, you could also go to jail or prison. You could potentially be deported. There’s, there’s different things that happen when you decide to do these things. So we are not legal experts here, we’re trying to put forward: how do you make some decisions around civil disobedience? But your unique situation, your identities, your past history, all of those things are going to play into this decision making, and we can’t speak to all of those circumstances. So we we are not encouraging anyone to make any particular decisions. We wanted to have a conversation about what you might want to consider when you’re making your own personal decision. Because this is hard stuff, and especially with how you’re perceiving what’s happening in the world right now, this may feel very, very relevant to steps you’re considering taking or have already taken.
Curt Widhalm 15:38
For the sake of post test questionnaires. This is also the reminder that licensing boards are first and foremost consumer protection agencies, and so they’re going to be evaluating things through are the people who are licensed or registered to us as a board doing so in a way that is generally some way that the state or the jurisdiction says to the public, yes, this person is a safe professional to approach.
Katie Vernoy 16:08
Boards, you know, boards of psychology or mental health or all of those things, boards of behavioral sciences, those boards and that process is functionally fairly separate from ethics code violations and what ethics committees do. I think there’s a whole separate episode on ethics codes and ethics committees that we may want to do when we’re both off the ethics committee. But I don’t know that that’s totally relevant, because we’re coming from this space of ethics being our savior, so following the ethics at the expense of the laws. So, so we’ll see if that that fits in here. But to me, I feel like we’re more talking about breaking laws. If we’re if that’s kind of where we’re going. But maybe there’s, there’s a piece of this that’s also reconsidering ethics, and do we follow the follow the ethical codes? So.
Curt Widhalm 17:00
I would like to start with the ethics codes, and then let’s talk about the laws.
Katie Vernoy 17:03
All right. All right. That sounds like a good plan.
Curt Widhalm 17:06
So in general, we like to talk about the major professional ethics codes, as well as the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists ethics codes, because that’s the board that Katie and I sit on. And when we look at where the ethics codes are today in 2025 as far as some guidance around when laws and ethics conflict. And this is where a lot of the research for the journal articles that we were searching around terms laws and ethics collide, resolving conflicts between laws and ethics. First looking at the ethical decision making process that is governed between the American Psychological Association, the American Counseling Association, National Association of Social Workers, American Association of Marriage and Family Therapists and the aforementioned CAMFT, there’s some language in each of the codes that does talk about resolving ethical issues. For example, the American Psychological Association’s 1.02 is literally titled ‘Conflicts between ethics and law regulations or other governing legal authority’ and it goes on to describe that if psychologists ethical responsibilities conflict with law regulations or other governing legal authority, psychologists clarify the nature of the conflict, make known their commitment to the ethics code and take reasonable steps to resolve the conflict consistent with the general principles and ethical standards of the ethics code. Under no circumstances may the standard be used to justify or defend violating human rights. So at first listen Katie put that in normal people language.
Katie Vernoy 19:00
I hear that as do the best that you can to follow both the laws and the ethics, understand that at times when it’s going to be impossible that you say, I commit to my ethics. And it doesn’t say you can break the law, but it certainly says that you can’t violate human rights. So if you believe the law disobeys that and does violate human rights, I think there’s an argument there that your ethics code says that I cannot follow that law.
… 19:38
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Curt Widhalm 19:43
And we are going to come back and talk a little bit more about the history of the APA, and especially 1.02 here, in just a little bit.
Katie Vernoy 19:52
Yes, I think there’s going to be a little bit about Guantanamo.
Curt Widhalm 19:55
So, the other codes are largely not as explicit around what to do when there is conflict, and…
Katie Vernoy 20:11
But if they do, they’re very similar. It’s clear that that a lot of folks use the APA as a guideline and or the reverse.
Curt Widhalm 20:17
Right, and as the CAMFT, AAMFT and ACA codes kind of spell throughout in their own ways, it does speak to language around follow the law.
Katie Vernoy 20:31
Well, I think the AAMFT one actually said work to adhere as closely to the ethics as you can while following the law.
Curt Widhalm 20:39
The one code that does speak differently to this is the National Association of Social Workers code of ethics.
Katie Vernoy 20:46
Which, of course, it does. This is the social justice group.
Curt Widhalm 20:51
So, the National Association of Social Workers in their purpose of the NASW Code of Ethics does speak specifically to this. And so I’m going to quote a couple of different parts of this here. Social Workers should consider ethical theory and principles generally. Social Work theory and research, laws, regulations, agency, policies and other relevant codes of ethics, recognizing the one codes of ethics of social workers should consider the NASW code of ethics as their primary source. Social workers also should be aware of the impact on ethical decision making of their clients, their own personal values and cultural and religious beliefs and practices. Skipping some here, it goes on to say instances may arise when social workers ethical obligations conflict with agency policies or relevant laws or regulations. When such conflicts occur, social workers must make a responsible effort to resolve the conflict in a manner that is consistent with the values, principles and standards expressed in this code. If a reasonable resolution of the conflict does not appear possible, social workers should seek proper consultation before making a decision. Skipping a little bit more here, violation of standards in this code does not automatically imply legal liability or violation of law. So the social work Code is the one that does say, follow the code. And as you pointed out, this does seem to be built within the social justice standards upon which social work is built.
Katie Vernoy 22:25
Well, and it’s also pretty squishy, because it says, If you’re going to not follow the law consult. It doesn’t say what that consultation should consist of, who you should consult with, necessarily. And I think it gives a lot of wiggle room. So I think we do have some wiggle room where the ethics code say, in good faith, be responsible. Try to resolve the conflict as best you can. Most of them say, get as close as you can to both and social workers are follow the ethics code, and if you’re going to break a law, consult with somebody. It’s like CYA.
Curt Widhalm 23:04
I’m just imagining those consultations starting with anybody else up for breaking the law today?
Katie Vernoy 23:10
We ride at dawn!
Curt Widhalm 23:15
There did exist some language in the APA code in a 2002 update that standard 1.02 at the time read, if conflict between the law and the ethics code is unresolvable, psychologists may adhere to the requirements of the law, regulations or other governing legal authority. And in 1.03 at the time, also went on to say, to the extent feasible, psychologists resolve conflicts between organizational demands and professional ethics in a way that permits adherence to the ethics code. You can find all of our references over in our show notes, over at mtsgpodcast.com, and this coming from an article by Flynn et all, they go on to talk about that under these standards, APA was endorsing a deference to the law or institutional demands, and it discouraged psychologists from civil disobedience grounded in their ethical principles. And the timing of this is very conveniently, after 9-11. And this was initially passed about nine months after 9-11 and after the initial passing of the Patriot Act, that was federal law that required, amongst other things, from therapist’s responsibility if the FBI was seeking out information. The changes to this law the APA denies that it has anything to do with 9-11 or with the Patriot Act themselves. But this did exist for about eight years before they updated it to the language that we see today. I’ll read that language here in just a moment. But it being very shortly after such a national crisis, and as we’ve talked before with some of the people in our podcast, as we’ve talked before with people at our former Therapy Reimagined conference, is that sometimes the laws and ethics codes, the ethics codes tend to follow pressures from some of the political systems, and while the APA seems to deny it in this Flynn article, the timing of it is rather historically convenient.
Katie Vernoy 25:30
Sure.
Curt Widhalm 25:32
This wasn’t without controversy, because, as you had mentioned, there was some psychologists who participated with the US Department of Justice in Guantanamo Bay, and psychological principles were used in ways that helped to use… what was the language that was really popular at the time? Advanced interrogation techniques.
Katie Vernoy 25:55
Yes, advanced interrogation that clearly was not following the principles of human rights.
Curt Widhalm 26:05
That might be a softer, politically nuanced way of saying torture. This is going back to the Flynn article that in response to the critiques, members of the APA ethics committee cited consensus that quote “there are laws that one must not follow” while also arguing that quote “finding the right language to identify which laws one may never follow is not so easily done.” Further, the committee argued that the previous resolutions affirmed and reaffirmed civil disobedience compatibility with the ethics code, but placing the member’s discretion on how to follow whether the law or the ethics code should be the priority. And they eventually gave in to much better reasoning that psychologists should not be participating in torture, and they updated their language to the language that we see today. And 1.02 currently reads what we had talked about earlier, that when there is that ethical responsibility that comes into conflict with the law, psychologists clarify the nature of the conflict, make known their commitment to the ethics code and take reasonable steps to resolve it consistent with the principles and ethical standards of the code, and not using it to justify or defend violating human rights.
Katie Vernoy 27:35
Yes, so a very important update. So, after 9-11 there was some political pressure to comply with the Patriot Act that potentially would cause folks to break confidentiality and/or participate in torture, and once that was really analyzed, looked at, sorted through, and there was really negative repercussions from what had happened, it changed to what it is now. And so psychologists are actually required to break the law if it is seen as a human rights violation. Is that how I’m understanding kind of where the, where it sits now?
Curt Widhalm 28:18
Yes, and this article does go on to say that their interpretation is that while the code does stop short of mandating civil disobedience, the codes are no longer an affirmative defense for any psychologist who remains complicit in human rights violations. Now, this might seem like something that all right, it’s got some flavors of what’s going on with some of the politics today, but many of the discussions that I’ve seen that are advancing where these principles and specific ethical codes are playing out in the language at the time of recording, and we’re recording this about a month before we’re releasing this. So, who knows how many executive orders have changed since then. But a lot of the discussions that we’ve seen that have led up to what we’re talking about today, and including some things that Katie and I have talked about historically that raised some of these issues earlier, are particularly around executive orders that talk about there are only two genders, and this is a reminder that executive orders only direct what the executive branch of the government recognizes. They don’t yet actually make laws. So some of the questions that I’ve seen posted or seen directed to me are around such topics as providing gender affirming care to clients when funding for reimbursements ends up not reimbursing for gender affirming care. How do we do this? How do we do this in ways that both comply with the law while providing, I don’t know, clinically, scientifically, backed treatment?
Katie Vernoy 30:15
Yeah.
Curt Widhalm 30:18
And some people are really starting to question: how do I fall in line with what the laws are? How do I protect my clients rights? And what has largely come out of the 2010 APA update on this is further directions down the line. Because a lot of the professional organizations will examine, what do our ethics code say? How does that guide our policy? How does that guide our position statements? And Katie and I used to be on the CAMFT board of directors, and we would hear language from our executive directors around these are statements that the organization has previously made. This is what our ethics code direction is. That would help make some of the decision making process easier when it came to making public statements. And we have seen this as recently as 2023 mostly because that’s just the easiest tab for me to pull up on my array of tabs here. This is not necessarily the most recent one, but the easiest one for me to pull up and reference here is a position paper put out by the American Psychological Association that says psychologists should keep patients reproductive health decisions confidential. And this was really post Roe v Wade being overturned around that psychologists who may be aware of patients decisions to seek out abortions, that that should remain confidential and that should be the higher value to uphold, even if laws end up changing around seeking out patients medical records and possible pursuit of finding out who’s engaged in in this process.
Katie Vernoy 32:03
I think there’s potentially a full episode on documentation that we’ll need to put together, because it is something where I feel like it gets really confusing. What’s clinically relevant? Ahat’s useful in actually doing the treatment? And how do I then make sure that if my documents are subpoenaed, taken hold of in some, some way, that I’ve not put any of my clients at risk? I think there’s, there’s definitely lines to walk. And I I know we have an episode where we talked about that quite a while ago, I think it was when Roe v Wade was overturned, and then also issues around gender affirming care that we had some ideas and that was that’s actually a pretty old episode, but I’ll link to it in the show notes at mtsgpodcast.com but it is pretty nuanced. I think the more that our professional associations can make statements like that to help us know what is in kind of the realm of what’s normal. I think that can be really helpful. And so I think one of the ways that we can protect our clients human rights is in getting really clear on how we document in a way that’s protective of them. And as I said, maybe we go into that later in a full episode.
Curt Widhalm 33:23
And briefly, what I’m hearing clinicians talk about when it comes to some of these topics, gender affirming care. I’m seeing some clinicians make the decisions that everybody doesn’t get pronouns in their documentation. Rather than referring to a client’s pronouns as directed by the client that everybody gets referred to as, client expressed this client’s family member said this that there’s no he, she, they, however people want to identify, and if nobody has pronouns, then there’s no indication of changes. I think that that’s pretty smart when it comes to where the documentation aspects are, but it doesn’t change where your responsibility is to bill appropriate codes and diagnostics that you would still need to follow, and at least as the time of recording on this, I don’t have sound direction advice to give you when it comes to gender affirming care as it becomes a clinical diagnosis for reimbursement.
Katie Vernoy 34:29
I think it becomes really complicated, because for folks who are wanting to get insurance reimbursement for gender affirming care, and they’re in a place that still has it available, a therapist might be incentivized. It might be the right thing to do to put gender dysphoria down, and yet that is a signifier and a record that could follow somebody. And if that there truly is danger there, which it seems that there is. That could also be dangerous. So I think, as I’ve said, I think the documentation thing is pretty challenging, and we may need to do a deeper dive in a future episode.
Curt Widhalm 35:11
I’ve also heard some clinicians talking around reproductive considerations, specifically around abortion, as solely referring to medical procedures within their case documentation, and do what you can in that direction, but you also will need to have consistent treatment plans, and we will talk about that in what Katie is referring to as a future episode on documentation.
Katie Vernoy 35:40
The more we talk, the more we realize this is actually a full episode just on documentation.
Curt Widhalm 35:45
There is some guidance within the ethics codes, and as we’ve pointed out several times, that a lot of the ethics codes point to when it comes to human rights, we should have some of our professional responsibilities and some of our professional knowledge to help us to work, not just in one to one cases, but also on systemic cases around how we can interact. This was very evident post George Floyd, when a lot of people in our profession and mental health profession, speaking broadly, rather than just to our specific licensure, really wanted to start working on systemic changes around being able to look at racial discrimination and the ways that that is systemically set up. And there’s a lot of good advocacy work that did end up helping to change some laws and directions, and a lot of the professional organizations have written plenty about that. Some people did end up participating in marches and protests. And one of the conversations that I had had at the time was with then Executive Director Kim Madsen of the California BBS to this question around, hey, if people are participating in these protests, and they get arrested, how does the board look at things? And Kim has since retired, but her answer at the time was basically, if it’s not substantially related to the work as a profession, that people are encouraged to exercise their rights as citizens, and if you happen to get arrested, as long as you’re not engaging in, like I mentioned earlier, the vandalism and riotous acts that might come up, you’re still held to a standard that is above most other citizens when it comes to your professional licensure, but merely participating in constitutionally protected actions, go out and do as you see fit.
Katie Vernoy 37:53
And yet, if we look at what’s been happening, that may not be available to all people with all identities. And that relies on the government following the rule of law and not labeling a peaceful protest a riotous activity. And so I just want to acknowledge that, yes, in most situations, potentially in a number of jurisdictions, going out and protesting or marching or whatever, probably is protected and should not impact your license. And yet, there is the potential that that would be the case. And so I think it really becomes your decision: Are you willing to take that risk? Because I think things that have been labeled, a bunch of good people just protesting and them being arrested and imprisoned was a wrong that has recently been righted. I disagree with that. I think that was riotous acts, and there are folks who have had some peaceful protests where it has been called terrorism. So I think it’s it’s hard to just say, Oh, well, if you’re just protesting, you’re fine. And theoretically, if you’re just protesting you’re fine.
Curt Widhalm 39:16
At least, as of the time of recording on this when we’ve seen some of the executive orders retroactively changing some of the ways that laws were being applied to people before. I’m talking specifically about the rollbacks on student loan forgiveness. That people who participated in agencies that provided gender affirming care, potentially for years, you may be near the finish line, as far as having your loans being forgiven only to have that snatched out at the very end. And I feel terrible for people in that situation. But where now we’re looking at some past actions as potentially being rolled out and evaluated in ways that are now questionable if it’s going to be something that is you’re pointing out is going to be continued to looked at as having followed the law as the way that it’s being interpreted on some random Tuesday.
Katie Vernoy 40:24
So I think because laws may change or they may be interpreted differently due to whatever administration regime is in power, I think it probably makes sense at this point to talk through a decision making process that I think folks should go through irrespective of what’s happening in the world, because it is so individualized.
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Curt Widhalm 40:49
This decision making process comes from an article by Knapp, Gottlieb, Berman, and Handelsman. This was published in professional psychology 2007 and I think this decision making process still holds up today, not only within the larger civil disobedience, but any time that laws and ethics collide. And appropriately, this article is titled, ‘When laws and ethics collide: What should psychologists do?’ And they use some case examples here. I’m going to start with what their recommendations are, and then talk about how this is not just about whether to engage in civil disobedience, but even in some of the smaller ways that this might show up in one to one work with clients. So their recommendations are first, seek consultation to ensure what the law requires them to do and what they believe that the law requires. So consistent with all of our ethics code so far, seek consultation. Don’t make decisions solely on your own.
Katie Vernoy 41:57
And I hear that as make sure you understand the law. So this may not even be consult with your peers. This could be consult with an attorney who has expertise in the law that you feel like is potentially problematic for being able to also keep to the ethics codes.
Curt Widhalm 42:18
Yes, agreed. Second make certain that they understand their ethical obligations clearly.
Katie Vernoy 42:27
So, this is where you go to the ethics codes, and potentially folks who you recognize as being versed in ethics or similarly situated as you are, and understand the ethics codes.
Curt Widhalm 42:42
And pretty much all of the ethics codes that I know, say, go through an ethical decision making process. We’ve described the Pope and Vasquez one in our previous podcast episode. We’ll throw that into our show notes as well. But go through some kind of an ethical decision making process. And a lot of ethical decision making processes also have you consider, what does the law say? Third, they say, consider alternatives that would allow them to follow the law while still upholding their values.
Katie Vernoy 43:15
So, I know what this means, but I also hear it is find a loophole.
Curt Widhalm 43:22
Reference Antigone. Be Antigone-istic. But you’re not wrong in that interpretation. Next, they say contemplate violating a law only if no viable alternative is available. And if a decision is made to disobey the law, the psychologist must ask, if I disobey the law, how can I limit my disobedience to the minimum necessary to fulfill my higher goal? Now, one of the case examples that they go through in this particular article, talks about a seriously depressed adolescent patient confiding to the psychologist that she thought but was not certain that her father had sexually abused her. The psychologist was practicing in a state that mandated the report of all sexual abuse by a parent against any child under the age of 18. However, the patient stated that she would kill herself if the psychologist reported this to the local child protective services agency. The psychologist has had previous interactions with the agency in the past, and the psychologist lacked confidence in its ability to handle the situation with the adequate sensitivity to the emotional needs of the child. Patient had not seen her father for many years, and there was no foreseeable likelihood that she would have any future contact with him. So, in a decision making process like this, you have what the law says, and you have what is clinically relevant in a way that is life or death for a potential client here. And so following this four step procedure is, what does the law say? What does our ethics code say, I should consult with somebody and make sure that I’m talking through this because on one hand, I’m in this position where if I follow the law, somebody could take their life.
Katie Vernoy 45:29
And if I don’t follow the law, a predator might be out in the world hurting other people. You know, these are not easy decisions, and I think the challenge for all of us is to determine protecting the person in front of me versus protecting society as a whole.
Curt Widhalm 45:47
According to the authors of this article, you shouldn’t only evaluate this if you’re making the decision to disobey the law. You should also, if you decide to obey the law, ask questions such as, how can I minimize the harm to the offended ethical values? For example, the psychologist can act to minimize the negative impact of the decision by including the patient in the process as much as possible. Psychologists might inform the patient of the legal obligations and give her the opportunity to have input into the matter in which the disclosure is made, or the psychologist could ask the child protective services agency to interview the girl in her office with her mother present, if that is what the girl prefers. You still, at the end of the day, are the professional in a case such as this, and you will have to ultimately be the one responsible for making a professional decision and follow their procedure by consulting and not making that decision solely on your own.
Katie Vernoy 46:50
Yeah, that’s so interesting, because if I’m the psychologist in that case and I don’t report, I’m at risk, and if I do report I’m also at risk. So I think it’s a great example, and it brings up not only ethics, but also, I think morals and values. I put forward a question that kind of has a similar flair to it when I sent this over to you and it looks at following my ethics, laws, whatever, in my work, or thinking about society as a whole. And so to tie it to something that feels relevant: What if you were Hitler’s therapist? What if you were FDR’s therapist and could encourage FDR to enter the war sooner? It’s looking at, do we have responsibilities, or do we have opportunities where we might break either ethical codes or laws but impact society as a whole? And maybe this one’s too philosophical to get into at this point, but I I think it is interesting when we think about the work we do with individual clients, because I think that’s going to happen for a lot of our therapists, is that that conundrum?
Curt Widhalm 48:15
And I think we’ve seen some of where maybe not being somebody’s direct therapist, but we had Dr. Bandy Lee as one of our speakers at one of our Therapy Reimagined conferences, and Dr. Lee has been very vocal for at this point, the last 10 plus years about such publications as “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump” and a lot of her public outcry about the ways that she and other authors thought that Donald Trump would be a very dangerous president, and she’s faced a variety of criticisms and supports, but ultimately ended up losing Professor positions and had ethics accusations made against her, and she’s no longer a part of the American Psychiatric Association, but she felt that she was upholding her duty to protect the public, especially around her background and knowledge around dangerous people in powerful positions.
Katie Vernoy 49:19
Yeah.
Curt Widhalm 49:20
So not quite answering your question as far as if the therapist themself is treating somebody in this situation, but my first question with either of the examples that you gave would be, are you coming to California for all of our sessions? Because I can’t do virtual telehealth with you, and I got to follow those laws first and foremost, maybe I can refer you to somebody who’s more locally relevant to you.
Katie Vernoy 49:49
What a cop out.
Curt Widhalm 49:53
The nature of confidentiality seems to be the highest standard that we hold in pretty much any of our work. With some of the mandated breaches of confidentiality, when this was especially language after the Tatiana Tarasoff cases, that when there’s danger to the public, privacy needs to be forgotten.
Katie Vernoy 50:18
Sure.
Curt Widhalm 50:19
If you’re Hitler’s therapist, could be its own little side podcast that we can do. But when it does come to some of the threats, there’s how you would clinically work with it, but in that particular case, when the interpretation and the one who is designing the laws are what is relevant and guiding you, our ethics codes do direct us to be able to protect people.
Katie Vernoy 50:54
Yes, and we may not be able to influence them due to client autonomy, the importance of treatment planning and and buy in from the client. So there’s clinical reasons not to do these things. We have a whole episode on client autonomy, so I’ll link to that in the show notes as well. But I think the point I’m trying to make is that as therapists, we are impacting, usually, one person or a small group of people within one office hour. And being able to protect them, protect their confidentiality, I’ll put a link to it, a an article that I found around kind of the legal elements of you know, whether you’re going to have to, you know, report somebody to ICE, or if ICE comes knocking on your physical office door, what you can do, what you should, what you need to know. But I think we have those responsibilities, and we have responsibilities to do the therapy that our client wants. And yet, if we have clients who are in positions of power, it can be very tempting to try to influence them. And I think there could be arguments that we’re influencing them in a way that is towards health, but that’s also very much defined by our own perspectives and potentially society as whole. But if this person has an influence on what society considers health, you could potentially be at have some liability, and you probably would lose a client. So let’s be honest. But I think it’s important for us to recognize both our responsibilities to our clients and their human rights are opportunities to make a difference. That’s what some of the episodes that we’re trying to put together, as far as reliable resources, things that we can give to our clients, documentation and how we can protect their confidentiality, even within their mental health records. And there is a line where, if we cross it, we potentially both harm our credibility and our, I would say, morals and ethical values as a clinician. And there are other lines that potentially we hold those but we put ourselves at legal risk, and we could end up incarcerated or worse.
Curt Widhalm 53:29
There’s a 2011 article by Kenneth Pope, who from the aforementioned Pope and Vasquez decision making model that we had talked about. This article is titled, ‘Are the American Psychological Association’s Detainee Interrogation Policies Ethical and Effective?’ And this is really speaking to that period of 2002 to 2010 around that APA code, 1.02 and the softening of it. And part of what Pope ends up describing in this article is that following World War Two, and really the Nuremberg defense, that we were just following orders that was used by a lot of the Nuremberg defendants, a lot of the professional organizations, ethics codes after that time ended up developing in response the Nuremberg ethic, that people who chose to violate fundamental ethical responsibilities could not avoid responsibility by blaming laws, orders or regulations. So part of what you’re talking about here is that from 1947 until 2002 and then 2010 to present, we as professionals can’t just say that we are following orders when it comes to whether or not we do what is appropriate in protecting human rights. That the issues, particularly around this Nuremberg ethic, are something that was really only specific to the American Psychological Association and its members at the time, and it does end up citing criticisms from other professionals such as Triskel in 2009 wrote, fortunately, UK psychologists don’t use the APA code of ethics. And in 2007 Burton and Kagan wrote, In the British Psychological Society, psychologists that most concerning of all the APA allows its members the Nuremberg defense that I was only following orders. The implication is that psychologists are permitted to assist in torture and abuse, if they can claim that they first tried to resolve the conflict between their ethical responsibilities of the law regulations or government legal authority, otherwise they can use the Nuremberg defense. Now, I’ve kind of mockingly in the past said it doesn’t describe how much effort that we need to put in when we raise our concerns about, hey, this violates my ethics codes, as long as you can generally say the words, this is against the ethics. Oh, no. Okay, let’s engage in some torture. That you have met your ethical obligations. I don’t actually mean that, but that meets the letter of the law and the ethics but thankfully, this has been changed in the meantime.
Katie Vernoy 56:30
And I think the flip side this doesn’t meet my ethics code, and so I’m going to violate the laws. There’s the additional lack of guidance. Who’s defining what is a human rights violation? How are we determining we’ve done sufficient due diligence and consultation, and so this isn’t easy stuff. This is something where I think we are going to have to rely on our own judgment and the consultation with colleagues and attorneys to be able to determine whether or not we follow the laws around complying with court orders, when it’s I need to find these particular immigrants or these particular people of said identities. I don’t want to ever be accused of or feel like I have just followed orders, and I don’t want to descend into chaos.
Curt Widhalm 57:47
Let me go back to the Flynn et al article here and talk about some of the highlights that they spend several pages writing about, but they end up talking about where the APA ethics code is now that it seems like the ethics code empowers civil disobedience and only where the psychologist’s workplace context, duties and roles are engaged. It doesn’t seem to direct where personal lives are, and that does fly in the face of what you and I have seen in disciplinary cases where people who are even acting outside of their professional roles can get in trouble for things. Not all of the DUI cases that we see ending up in the disciplinary sections are when people are on the job. That many of these are personal decisions that people make and happen on their own time. So even when you are not in your professional role, you are still held to the standards of what it is to be a professional. They cite Alan and Dodge 2018 that political action in our profession challenges artificial barriers between personal and professional activity, and the ethics codes should apply to politicized activities outside of psychologists’ workplaces. Examples that they give are civil disobedience that would result in disrupting traffic during an unpermitted march or sheltering community members targeted by law enforcement. And they go on to say, while it’s hardly exhaustive. The ethics code can empower psychologists to enact public psychologies for civil disobedience. Given the APA s assertion that civil disobedience is entirely compatible with the ethics code, the authors encourage psychologists to utilize the ethics code to inform how they contest social injustices, regardless of whether that contestation takes place on or off the proverbial clock. They…
Katie Vernoy 59:48
You have to think about it no matter what.
Curt Widhalm 59:50
Yes. So they recommend, and this is very much within the spirit of the ap article that that participation ends up being something that you consult on, that you should follow the lead of support and build equitable partnerships with social justice movements in the pursuit of civil disobedience, and that as professionals challenging the prototypes for civil disobedience by respecting turning to an intentionally drawing from diverse methods. As they quote, civil disobedience can be put more just vision for the world into practice wherever we are able. And quoting Malcolm X, people who have made the mistake of confusing the methods with the objectives, as long as we agree on the objectives, we should never fall out with with each other, just because we believe in different methods or tactics or strategies to reach a common goal. Kind of preventively arguing that, okay, you can protest, but not in that way. So it’s protesting in ways that might be effective towards reaching an objective, even if it’s not all agreed upon, and you and I do have a recent podcast around how to effectively advocate for change.
Katie Vernoy 1:01:08
Going back to my statement about chaos, I think this all hinges on us believing that the rule of law will be followed, that if we follow laws, we will be safe. And if we don’t follow laws, but we do it within a civil disobedience framework, which is, well, revolution is how we were founded, but if we do that we’ll be okay. And I think I will reiterate again, each person has their own risks and desires in this this thing. But it got me thinking, what if we want to start a revolution, what if we want to make a big difference, and we aren’t going to get all of the permissions, because most people aren’t following laws anyway, when it comes to these things. Or we do, as you describe them, riotous acts, because that is the only way to get attention, if that’s the argument that’s being made. I think we’ve made the point that as therapists and whatever licensure we hold, we are held to a higher standard. And it is hard to say that what I’m doing in my private life, if it’s out in a public space, is not reasonably related to my license. And so I think that, you know, before we have to wrap up the episode, I think it makes sense to talk about what therapists are actually considering when we’re making when we’re making those decisions. How do we make decisions? What are we considering when we want to stand up and protect human rights, to protect fellow humans? What can we do and what is the decision we’re actually making when we are also therapists in addition to social justice warriors, to use a pretty cliche phrase?
Curt Widhalm 1:03:18
Being a revolutionary is probably a full time job.
Katie Vernoy 1:03:24
Fair enough.
Curt Widhalm 1:03:25
And if that is the calling that people end up finding themselves in a time of history where that is the consideration they’re doing, they might find themselves doing it as a former therapist, as opposed to a current therapist, because there might be conflicts that are the held within the way that laws are written, interpreted and, most importantly, enforced, that might result in you being a former therapist when the dust settles.
Katie Vernoy 1:04:01
Do you have to be willing to take that risk and or be really good at becoming a life coach.
Curt Widhalm 1:04:07
Now, if what you’re referring to is the society around us gets to the point where people are considering that as a decision and that, oh, rule of the land is not being enforced or even existing, then all of that is moot anyway. But really, I think, in the spirit of this episode is making the decisions around civil disobedience, which does at least acknowledge that there are laws that are still being enforced and how to walk the line of maintaining your professional licensure while being able to act in a way that is towards social justice or towards being able to protect human rights.
Katie Vernoy 1:04:52
And align with your morals and values. We recognize that we don’t share the morals and values of all of our listeners, but I think these apply to anyone, anywhere. If you’re being called to do something as a professional and you’ve got laws and ethics that you’re supposed to follow, and those clash with your morals and values, these are the decisions you’re gonna have to make.
Curt Widhalm 1:05:22
You can find our show notes over atmtsgpodcast.com. You can also find how to get credit for CEs over there. Listen to the intro and the outro and follow us on our social media. Join our Facebook group to continue on with some of these conversations. And until next time, I’m Curt Widhalm with Katie Vernoy.
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Katie Vernoy 1:05:43
Just a quick reminder, if you’d like one unit of continue education for listening to this episode, go to moderntherapistcommunity.com, purchase this course and pass the post test. A CE certificate will appear in your profile once you’ve successfully completed the steps.
Curt Widhalm 1:05:58
Once again, that’s moderntherapistcommunity.com.
Announcer 1:06:02
Thank you for listening to the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide. Learn more about who we are and what we do at mtsgpodcast.com. You can also join us on Facebook and Twitter, and please don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss any of our episodes.
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