I really should stop reading Traditional Catholicism, but the commeteriat is so good. The blandest topic gets 200 plus posts.

I want to talk a little about ethics in counselling. I’m starting with something Mortician said.

I have met very few psychologists at all that were supportive of traditional values…I tend to go for depression (it is of a cyclical nature) but I am usually pregnant and can’t take pills (plus they make my ADD worse) and I find that it is quite difficult to get a psyche who doesn’t lecture me on my life choices.

via Fear not the Neo-Trad…it ain’t ever gonna happen « Traditional Christianity.

This conflicts with basic medical ethics. One of my mentors has written this:

There are four fundamental virtues originating from John Gregory’s concept of professionalism,the most important of which is integrity. Integrity commits physicians to a lifelong pursuit of excellence in the care of patients. Compassion, which follows Gregory and Hume’s account of sympathy .moves physicians to protect and promote the interests of patients through identification with their suffering. Self-effacement reduces the potential that differences between the physician and patient in social class, appearance,ethnicity, religion, and beliefs will adversely affect the physician-patient relationship. Percival (12), for example, argued that patientsfrom lower socioeconomic classes (the public patients of today)should not be treated as inferior but should be regarded as(especially) worthy. Self-sacrifice concerns the routine willingnessof physicians to make sacrifices in their own lives in order to advance the interests of patients.

I work with psychologists and (some) psychotherapists. They would condemn me if I told a sex worker that she is reliving her trauma… and should change her lifestyle, because self effacement means I should not put my values onto another when in a therapeutic relationship.

However, Morticia is a Catholic woman who has a passel of children.  By criticising her (or her Islamic sister, Fatima) because they take their faith seriously and there are health consequences (depression in Mortica’s case_ we are breaking the ethical bounds of working with patients.

Yes, I know this is medical ethics, not psychology ethics. But ethics is ethics. The type of profession does not matter.

There are things that one can do with a pregnant woman who is depressed — apart from medication. Interpersonal therapy and CBT both work. (And both can be given by an experienced mental health worker — the only reason people limit therapy to Nurse Practitioners, Social Workers, Psychologists and Psychiatrists is credentialism).

What Morticia is describing is.. damaging. It limits the access of women like her to effective management of their mood. Projecting one’s political correctiness onto the person you are helping is simply unethical.