Overview:
Clinical treatment presents a unique and challenging array of ethical issues. This evidence-based workshop addresses, explores, and offers strategies for ethical decision-making, cultural sensitivity, and clinician self-care. The fast pace of daily life and clinical work challenges clinicians to maintain a reflective approach toward ethical concerns. Yet, awareness and reflection are, in each of these ethical dimensions, key to responsiveness. This workshop provides a space for reviewing current evidence, reflecting on ethical concerns, engaging in discussion, and building the inner reserves essential to therapists’ well-being.
The complexity of ethical dilemmas elicits strong feelings and often involves conflicting perspectives. Keen awareness, as well as the identification and acknowledgement of related thoughts and feelings, enhances ethical decision-making efficacy. A mindful narrative approach facilitates the delineation between ethical decisions that require setting limits and those that may suggest that there is an ethical breach. This experiential workshop provides a clear process for exploring professional ethical dilemmas and offers practice applying the process.
The therapist’s well-being directly impacts clinical outcomes and client satisfaction. Across disciplines, ethical codes recognize that therapists’ well-being constitutes a salient aspect of beneficence and client care. Given the intensity of clinical work, wellness strategies are especially critical. Contemplative approaches, practiced in session and at home, buffer practitioners from burnout that can compromise therapeutic benefits. Participants will review the evidence linking clinician self-care with positive clinical outcomes, engage in mindfulness practices designed to enhance caregivers’ compassion and resiliency, and take home detailed handouts instructing these approaches.
Equitable client treatment irrespective of race, ethnicity, gender, socio-economic status, and sexual orientation is an ethical responsibility requiring the clinician’s attunement to their personal identities, beliefs, historical perspectives, and early cultural and familial messages. Exploration and discussion of these elements will further the use of the self in therapy, enhance cultural sensitivity, and deepen the therapeutic dialogue.
Join Debra, a seasoned presenter, in exploring ethics through discussion, video clips, and small group work. Leave the seminar feeling renewed and equipped with new tools to apply in your work.
Objectives:
- Outline a mindful narrative process for exploring ethical dilemmas.
- Describe how cultural sensitivity applies to ethical practice
- Discuss the research findings addressing therapist self-care.
- Apply a five-step practice for enhancing therapist compassion.
- Practice breathing strategies for therapist renewal.
Scope and Limitations Disclosure
This course is intended for licensed mental health professionals and fulfills continuing education requirements in ethics. It offers a mindfulness-based approach to ethical decision-making, with additional emphasis on cultural sensitivity and clinician well-being. Participants will explore a structured process for navigating ethical dilemmas and review current research linking therapist self-care to improved client outcomes. While evidence-based strategies and experiential practices are included, the course is not a substitute for legal consultation or discipline-specific ethics certification. Clinicians should apply course material in accordance with their professional scope of practice and applicable ethical guidelines.
Commercial Support Disclosure
Dr. Debra Alvis has no relevant financial relationships or commercial support to disclose. There is no requirement to purchase any additional materials to complete this training.
Course materials are only available to enrolled students.
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Debra Alvis, Ph. D
Debra Alvis, licensed psychologist, developed the Mind/Body Program at the University of Georgia providing clinician training on the integration of contemplative approaches into psychotherapy. Her work as a professor at the University of Georgia included the supervision of health psychology doctoral students and co-leading a research team investigating mindfulness. She is a Mindfulness Meditation Teacher certified through Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield and is trained as a yoga therapist. Dr. Alvis maintains a private practice and has more than 25 years of clinical experience in treating clients with a variety of conditions by combining mindfulness, somatic, and traditional psychotherapeutic approaches. Her personal contemplative practice of three decades further supports her presentations. Debra lectures and leads retreats around the world. Her trainings have helped thousands of clinicians to integrate the richness of Mindfulness, neuroscience, and somatic psychotherapies with cognitive approaches for greater clinical effectiveness.
National Approvals
eCare BHI, as the accredited and approved sponsor, maintains responsibility for all the programs and must abide by each board’s continuing education guidelines.

Professional Counselors — The National Board for Certified Counselors (NBCC)
E Care Behavioral Health Institute has been approved by NBCC as an approved Continuing Education Provider. ACEP No. 6703. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC are clearly identified. E care Behavioral Health Institute is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs.

Addiction Professionals — NAADAC, the Association for Addiction Professionals (NAADAC)
E Care Behavioral Health Institute is officially on file with NAADAC, the Association for Addiction Professionals (NAADAC) as an Approved Education Provider. They are formally known as NAADAC Provider #139138. Please note that E care Behavioral Health Institute is solely responsible for all aspects of the program.

Social Workers — Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB)
E Care Behavioral Health Institute, #1706, is approved to offer social work continuing education by the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) Approved Continuing Education (ACE) program. Organizations, not individual courses, are approved as ACE providers. State and provincial regulatory boards have the final authority to determine whether an individual course may be accepted for continuing education credit. E Care Behavioral Health Institute maintains responsibility for this course.  ACE provider approval period: 06-03-2020 – 06-03-2026.Â

Psychologists — American Psychological Association (APA)
E Care Behavioral Health Institute is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. E Care Behavioral Health Institute maintains responsibility for this program and its content.

CE Broker
CE Broker is a continuing education tracking system in which licensees track their compliance and report their completed CE hours credit (CE Broker Tracking #50-33336)
State Approvals
States that Accept ASWB-ACE Approved Providers |
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Alabama | Alaska | Arizona | Arkansas | California | Colorado | Connecticut |
Delaware | District Of Columbia | Florida | Georgia | Hawaii | Idaho | Illinois |
Indiana | Iowa | Kansas | Kentucky | Louisiana | Maine | Maryland |
Massachusetts | Michigan | Minnesota | Mississippi | Missouri | Montana | Nebraska |
Nevada | New Hampshire | New Jersey | New Mexico | North Carolina | North Dakota | Ohio |
Oklahoma | Oregon | Pennsylvania | Rhode Island | South Carolina | South Dakota | Tennessee |
Texas | Utah | Vermont | Virginia | Washington | West Virginia | Wisconsin |
Wyoming |
States that Accepts NBCC Approved Courses:Â |
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Alabama | Alaska | Arizona | Arkansas | California | Colorado | Connecticut |
Delaware | District Of Columbia | Florida | Georgia | Hawaii | Idaho | Indiana |
Iowa | Maine | Maryland | Massachusetts | Missouri | New Hampshire | New Jersey |
New Mexico | Ohio | Oregon | Pennsylvania | Rhode Island | South Carolina | South Dakota |
Tennessee | Texas | Vermont | Virginia | Washington | Wisconsin |
- Nevada CPC’s and MFT’s accept ASWB-approved training
- North Dakota Board Of Counselor Examiners LAPC and LAPCS accept ASWB approved training
- Rhode Island Board of Mental Health Counselors and Marriage & Family Therapists MHC’s accept ASWB approved training
- Texas Behavioral Health Executive Council LPC and LPCS accept ASWB approved training
- Utah Division of Professional Licensing – CMHC’s accept ASWB approved training
- Washington State Department of Mental Health MHC’s accept ASWB approved training
- Wisconsin Council on Mental Health LPCS accepts ASWB-approved training
States that Accept NAADAC Approved Providers |
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Alabama | Alaska | Arizona | Arkansas | Delaware | Hawaii | Indiana |
Kentucky | Maine | Massachusetts | Minnesota | Montana | Nevada | New Jersey |
New Jersey | New Mexico | North Carolina | North Dakota | Oregon | Rhode Island | Tennessee |
Vermont | Virginia | Washington | West Virginia | Wisconsin | Wisconsin | Wyoming |
States that Accept APA Approved Providers |
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Alabama | Alaska | Arizona | Arkansas | California | Delaware | District Of Columbia |
Florida | Georgia | Idaho | Illinois | Indiana | Iowa | Kansas |
Kentucky | Louisiana | Maryland | Massachusetts | Minnesota | Mississippi | Missouri |
Montana | Nebraska | New Jersey | New Mexico | North Dakota | Ohio | Oklahoma |
Pennsylvania | Rhode Island | South Carolina | Tennessee | Utah | Vermont | Virginia |
Washington | West Virginia | Wisconsin | Wyoming |