A Time to Tell? Legal Issues regarding the Duty to Warn and Protect

A Time to Tell? Legal Issues Regarding the Duty to Warn and Protect Recent mass killings in Arizona, Colorado, and Connecticut, perpetrated by individuals with severe mental health disorders, stress the responsibility human services professionals have not only to serve individuals with mental health disorders but also to warn and protect, necessary, individuals in of being harmed by their clients. However, legal statutes and ethical codes that address exceptions to confidentiality for reporting potential client harm can be abstruse and often vary significantly across mental health professions and states (Quattrocchi & Schopp, 2005). These legal and ethical ambiguities and variations can confuse human services professionals, as well as leave them vulnerable to legal or ethical violations (Skovholt & Rivers, 2007). The purpose of this article is to raise legal issues that human services professionals should consider balancing their duty to protect or warn with their obligation to maintain confidentiality. This objective is accomplished by (a) reviewing briefly the Tarasoff v. Regents of the University of California case and discussing its appellate history; (b) reviewing extant literature regarding decision-making models; and (c) presenting issues for human services professionals to consider in potential duty to warn or protect situations. Tarasoff v. Regents of the University of California Tarasoff v. Regents of the University of California, 17 Cal. 3d 425; 551 P.2d 334. (Cal. 1976) is a seminal court ruling that many mental health professions, including the human services profession, utilize to determine their legal responsibilities associated with potential client harm toward others (Skovholt & Rivers, 2007). The court, in its initial 1974 opinion in Tarasoff v. Regents of the University of California (1974), ruled that therapists have a duty not only to warn law enforcement officers of potential threats to others, but also to warn potential victims. The plaintiffs in the case, the parents of Tatiana Tarasoff, sued the University of California-Berkeley for negligence in the death of their daughter. Tatiana was killed by a fellow student, who, before murdering Tatiana, had disclosed to his psychotherapist that he had planned to kill her she returned from vacation. Upon learning of his clients' plans, the psychotherapist, under the direction of his supervisor, contacted the university police to have his client involuntarily committed to the inpatient unit of the hospital. After determining that he was stable and after he agreed to stay away from Tatiana, the police released the client from custody. When Tatiana returned to Berkeley, the client murdered her. The court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, stating that the psychotherapist was negligent in his duty to warn the potential victim, Tatiana Tarasoff, of the impending threat to her life. In 1976, the Superior Court of California agreed to a rehearing of the 1974 Tarasoff case, and subsequently ruled that therapists have not only a duty to warn but a duty to protect. The court summary of the 1976 case stated the following: when a therapist determines, or pursuant to the standards of his profession should determine, that his patient presents a serious of violence to another, he incurs an obligation to use reasonable care to protect the intended victim against such danger (Tarasoff, 1976). Most states have followed the example of California and have developed similar legal statutes as those rendered in both Tarasoff cases (Edwards, 2013). However, some states have given ambiguous rulings regarding Tarasoff and others, like Virginia, have rejected Tarasoff's duty to warn altogether. A Lexis-Nexis Shepardizing analysis indicates that the Tarasoff ruling has been questioned once, criticized three times, received a positive analysis 65 times, and a concurring opinion 26 times. In essence, although the Tarasoff ruling in many cases is upheld or supported, in some cases it is not. …