Focus on Specialty Areas: Disaster Mental Health, Private Practice, Addictions Counseling, and Rehabilitation Counseling: Multiple relationship issues in private practice

This chapter focuses on issues pertaining to boundaries and multiple relationships that confront counseling practitioners in their work in the specialty areas of disaster mental health (DMH) and crisis work, private practice, addictions counseling, and rehabilitation counseling. It explores some of the unique boundary issues inherent in these specializations. The choices practitioners make on these issues are likely to either confound or clarify their attempts to practice aspirational ethics within an increasingly diverse world. For some therapists in private practice, circumstances can make it particularly difficult to maintain boundaries between their professional and personal or social lives. Private practitioners who use their personal residences for their offices may need to exercise particular care in keeping their personal and professional lives separate. It is strongly emphasized that counselors who may see current clients in a 12-step meeting keep in mind that "what is heard in meetings, stays in meetings".