This course addresses privacy, confidentiality, and privileged communication in such mental health specialty areas as clinical mental health, rehabilitation, couple and family therapy, school counseling, addiction treatment, group counseling, career counseling, and clinical supervision.

The content of this continuing education program is adapted from Ethics and Decision Making in Counseling and Psychotherapy. Used by permission of Springer Publishing Company, LLC.

Format: Asynchronous, reading-based distance learning. Non-interactive.

This course meets the requirement for the risk management discount for the American Professional Agency.

NAADAC Online CE Completion limits: There is a limit of 8 hours (8 CE) of credit for online courses within a 24-hour period.

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The course will be available in your account immediately after purchase. The Course Completion Certificate and Letter of Completion will be immediately available in your account upon successful completion of the course post-test (a score of 80% or higher) and completion of the course evaluation. You will have unlimited attempts to pass the post-test.

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American Psychological Association (APA)

At Health, LLC is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. At Health, LLC maintains responsibility for this program and its content.

National Board for Certified Counselors (NBCC)

At Health, LLC has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 6949. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. At Health, LLC is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs.

NAADAC – The Association for Addiction Professionals

Athealth.com is approved as a continuing education provider by the National Association of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Counselors, the Association for Addiction Professionals. #148460.

Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB)

At Health, LLC, Provider #1707, is approved as an ACE provider to offer social work continuing education by the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) Approved Continuing Education (ACE) program. Regulatory boards are the final authority on courses accepted for continuing education credit. ACE provider approval period: 5/3/2023–5/3/2026.

Page last modified or reviewed by athealth.com on Apr 26, 2026.

Robert Rocco Cottone, PhD, is a professor of counseling and family therapy at the University of Missouri-St. Louis in the Department of Counseling and Family Therapy. He earned his BA and MEd degrees at the University of Missouri-Columbia and his PhD degree at Saint Louis University. He has served on the American Counseling Association (ACA) Ethics Task Force that produced the 2005 revision of the Association's ethics code. He chaired the American Rehabilitation Counseling Association's and the Commission on Rehabilitation Counselor Certification's (CRCCs) collaborative Code of Professional Ethics for Rehabilitation Counselors task force for revision of the code in 2000. Dr. Cottone is a licensed professional counselor in Missouri and a licensed psychologist in Missouri and Arizona. He is a Certified Family Therapist (NCACFT). He is the author of several books, including Paradigms of Counseling and Psychotherapy (2012), Toward a Positive Psychology of Religion: Belief Science in the Postmodern Era (2010), and an earlier edition of this text, Counseling Ethics and Decision Making (2007). He has published extensively on matters of professional ethics and ethical decision making in counseling and psychology. He has also written extensively on advanced philosophical and theoretical issues in counseling and psychotherapy.

Vilia Tarvydas, PhD, LMHC, CRC, is professor emeritus and former chair of the Rehabilitation and Counselor Education Department at the University of Iowa. She was the founding director of the Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Ethics (I-DARE), and continues her active scholarship with I-DARE. Dr. Tarvydas previously served as the president of the National Council on Rehabilitation Education, the American Rehabilitation Counseling Association, and the American Association of State Counseling Boards (AASCB). In the latter capacity, she was a member of the ACA/AASCB 20/20 Initiative Oversight Committee and developed the Delphi methodology that has guided that process in its last several years.

Dr. Tarvydas has extensive experience in ethics governance and leadership and has chaired the Iowa Board of Behavioral Science and its Disciplinary Committee, as well as the ACA and CRCC ethics committees. She also chaired the CRCC Code Revision Task Force that wrote the 2010 CRCC Code of Professional Ethics, and was a member of the ACA Code Revision Task Force that wrote the 2005 ACA Code of Ethics. Currently, she is a member of the ACA Ethics Appeals Committee. For the last 6 years, she has produced and provided an annual ethics webinar continuing education series that was jointly produced by I-DARE and CRCC, and is series editor for ethics for CRCCs new continuing education online learning initiative. She was the senior coeditor of a special 2010 joint edition of the new code for three professional journals in rehabilitation counseling: Journal of Applied Rehabilitation Counseling, Rehabilitation Counseling Bulletin, and The Rehabilitation Professional. Dr. Tarvydas has published and presented extensively on ethics, ethical decision making, and professional governance and standards. Her most recent textbooks are Counseling Ethics and Decision Making and The Professional Practice of Rehabilitation Counseling.

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