Conference for Clinical Foundations: Ethics, Risk, & Duty of Care in 2026

In light of the growing demand for social justice and anti-racist practice in the United States, it is crucial for clinical practitioners to understand how to cater to the needs of diverse populations and create a space where clients feel empowered in their own identities, self-development, and engagement. During this presentation, I will discuss a research study that examined how healthcare professionals perceive diversity, particularly in terms of race and gender differences, and their involvement in diversity training, resources, policies, and initiatives. I encourage fellow clinical practitioners to prioritize social justice and will provide recommendations on how we can bring about meaningful change when working with diverse client populations. Practical implications of this approach include fostering open dialogue on social justice, embracing anti-racist action and Intersectionality in practice, and offering support and guidance for engaging in these conversations with clients and among ourselves.

Learning Objectives

After taking this activity, you should be able to:

1. Apply skills such as self-reflection and critical analysis to maintain and develop a racial perspective.
2. Identify strategies to incorporate anti-racism and social justice practices within your work.
3. Explain the implications for your practice and how to provide comprehensive training and resources for healthcare professionals and social workers.

This presentation reviews current research on how societal-level and structural factors influence mental health and examines how this knowledge can inform clinical practice in behavioral health fields. Participants will explore the ways in which broader social forces shape psychological and physiological functioning, with attention to both emerging technologies and long-standing socio-economic conditions.

The session will examine the mental health impacts of social media use and artificial intelligence, as well as structural economic factors such as housing instability and food insecurity. Emphasis will be placed on understanding how these factors contribute to stress, symptom presentation, and risk for psychiatric disorders across diverse populations.

By integrating research findings with clinical implications, this presentation will support clinicians in recognizing the role of structural influences in mental health and applying this understanding to assessment, case conceptualization, and treatment planning.

Learning Objectives

After taking this activity, you should be able to:

1. Define structural factors and explain their relevance to mental health outcomes.
2. Describe at least one way social media use and artificial intelligence can influence mental health conditions, based on current research.
3. Identify an economic factor (e.g., housing instability or food insecurity) that has been associated with an increased prevalence of psychiatric disorders.
4. Explain how awareness of structural factors and emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence, can enhance clinical practice, including assessment and intervention strategies.

In this presentation, participants will explore harm reduction as a clinical and ethical framework for substance use treatment. The session will examine core principles of harm reduction, its specific applications in clinical practice, and the broader policy contexts that shape how harm reduction strategies are implemented across treatment settings.

Participants will review common harm reduction interventions and consider the ethical implications of these approaches, including issues related to autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice. Attention will be given to how harm reduction strategies can be integrated into substance abuse treatment while navigating ethical tensions, clinical boundaries, and systemic constraints.

Through discussion and applied examples, this presentation will support clinicians in developing a nuanced understanding of harm reduction approaches and their ethical considerations, enhancing informed decision-making in substance use treatment contexts.

In an era in which clinicians face unprecedented ethical complexity, the ability to remain grounded, attuned, and regulated is no longer optional—it is foundational to ethical and clinical decision-making. This presentation introduces somatic therapy as a practical, evidence-informed framework that strengthens clinical judgment, reduces professional risk, and enhances client safety across diverse treatment settings and populations.

Somatic therapies offer more than experiential techniques; they provide clinicians with a neurobiological and interoceptive framework for understanding activation, dissociation, relative safety, transference dynamics, and boundary erosion—all of which directly influence clinical and ethical decision-making. By learning to read the body as data and track the “somatic signatures” of escalation or collapse, clinicians can improve the accuracy of risk assessment, identify early indicators of destabilization, and intervene with clarity rather than reactivity.

Participants will learn how nervous system regulation and embodied attunement support sound, defensible clinical decisions. They will examine how awareness of somatic countertransference can help prevent boundary violations, and how integrating somatic assessment into clinical practice enhances safety and protection for both clients and clinicians in high-risk situations.

Through clinical examples and immediately applicable strategies, this session reframes somatic therapy as an essential tool for practicing with confidence in today’s complex regulatory landscape—supporting clinicians in protecting their clients, their licenses, and themselves, while improving treatment outcomes.

Learning Objectives

After taking this activity, you should be able to:

1. Identify key somatic indicators of activation, dissociation, and relative safety and describe how these patterns inform judgment, risk assessment, and clinical decision-making.
2. Apply principles of nervous system regulation and embodied attunement to enhance therapeutic presence, reduce reactivity, and support defensible interventions in complex clinical situations.
3. Evaluate the role of somatic countertransference and somatic assessment in strengthening boundary management, reducing burnout and promoting safety for both clients and clinicians in high-stakes contexts.

This session explores the concept of confidentiality in light of the mental health professional’s duty to protect. The historical evolution of the duties to protect and/or warn others from client caused harm and to protect clients from self-harm are explored.

Important attention is paid to critically evaluating these duties, considering many factors that are often overlooked. Real life examples, like the important Tarasoff and Ewing cases, are used to clarify ethical and legal obligations, and highlighting the challenges found in the conflict between the two.

Learning Objectives

After taking this activity, you should be able to:

1. Explain the legal and ethical obligation to keep client information confidential.
2. Describe the evolution of the duty to protect and/or warn those at risk of client caused harm.
3. Identify how duties to protect and/or warn compromise the professional relationship with clients.
4. Competently discuss with their clients these obligations so that clients make an educated decision when sharing information with the professional.
5. Appropriately respond to ethical, legal, and moral conundrums faced when considering to breach client confidentiality.

During the course of their careers, behavioral health practitioners inevitably encounter complex ethical challenges that require skilled decision-making. Dr. Frederic Reamer will present a series of challenging ethics cases involving conflicting professional duties and discuss practical steps practitioners can take to manage ethical dilemmas effectively.

Key topics will include boundary issues, dual relationships, conflicts of interest, exceptions to confidentiality, privileged communication, informed consent, clients’ rights, documentation challenges, termination of services, and the use of technology, including artificial intelligence. This webinar will include discussion of relevant ethical standards, statutes, regulations, case law, and national practice standards.

Dr. Reamer will place particular emphasis on ethical decision-making protocols for complex cases that are designed to protect clients and help prevent lawsuits and licensing board complaints.

Learning Objectives

After taking this activity, you should be able to:

1. Identify challenging ethical issues and dilemmas in behavioral health.
2. Apply practical ethical decision-making frameworks and protocols.
3. Identify ethical issues that pose malpractice and liability risks.
4. Design strategies to protect clients and prevent lawsuits and licensing board complaints.

Transference and Countertransference can be challenging topics to address in supervision, and left unchecked, they can wreak havoc on the counseling or supervisory relationship. Counselors in training often struggle to understand transference and countertransference and may rely on their supervisors for help with this. Supervisors may also experience this phenomenon and there is often a need for new or optimal ways to address it. There are many levels to transference and countertransference including: client transference, counselor countertransference toward the client, counselor transference toward the supervisor, and supervisor countertransference toward the supervisee.

Understanding these levels and learning to set appropriate boundaries to address them can go a long way in preventing problems in both the counseling relationship and the supervisory relationship. This interactive webinar explores transference and countertransference in the supervisory relationship and offers techniques to address them in order to create better and more productive counseling and supervisory relationships.

Learning Objectives

After taking this activity, you should be able to:

1. Define transference and countertransference in the counseling and supervisory relationships, and discuss the different levels of each.
2. Recognize when transference or countertransference are occurring in the counseling or supervisor relationship.
3. State at least 2 practical tools that can be used in session to address transference and countertransference and set appropriate boundaries.