ABSTRACT
One of the roles of the professional bodies that regulate the varying forms of mental health practice (which include, but are not limited to, social work, psychology, psychiatry, and counseling) is to enforce the ethical principles adopted by each profession. ere are, of course, subtle dierences between each of these professions in terms of the ethical principles they espouse, dierences that are the product of the historical development of each profession and the role of ethics in its formation. For example, Brown (1997) suggests that psychological associations and societies developed ethical guidelines for psychological practice a considerable time aer the discipline of psychology itself was well established. By contrast, and as McCartt Hess and Feldman (2008) suggest, the discipline of social work was concerned much earlier in its formation with constituting itself as a discipline centered upon discussing what constitutes ethical practice. Today these diering histories are reected to some degree in the ethical codes of psychological and social work associations and societies, with the former primarily enshrining approaches to practice that emphasize the Hippocratic injunction to do no harm, whereas social work ethics tend to go further to include “aspirational ethics” that encompass a call for social change.
