You are working with a young woman, Yolanda, who is in a 2-year romantic relationship with Carly and who you have been treating for a few sessions in therapy for a symptoms related to alcohol use disorder, generalized anxiety, and panic attacks. Yolanda comes to you latest session and seems more distracted than usual. After some prodding, she starts to cry and relays the following story to you.
Over the weekend, both her and Carly had a party at the house and, despite your work to reduce Yolandas alcohol use, both of them drank a considerable amount of gin and tonics and became quite intoxicated. Yolanda does not remember all the details, but she knows that she said some things that embarrassed Carly in front of her work friends. After the guests left, Yolanda and Carly got into a terrible fight. Yolanda shares that she said nasty things about Carlys weight gain over the last six months and threw a bowl of salsa at one of her paintings that was on an easel in their sun room.
I know that she was proud of that painting, said Yolanda, and she had just put the finishing touches on it that morning. With her head down, Yolanda then shares with you what happened next. She says that her cat, Tobias, came into the sunroom at that point and tried to rub her head against Carlys leg.
Carly looked like a gi
ant roach touched her leg, said Yolanda. Her eyes were wild and I hardly recognized her in that moment. Before Yolanda could intervene, Yolanda stomped down heavily on the cat and broke its neck with her foot.
Yolanda says that Carly immediately knew the gravity of what she had done, but it was too late to save Tobias. The next morning, they buried the cat in the woods at the perimeter of the property. Yolanda says that she has never had a relationship last this long and she knows that Carly would have never done such a horrible thing if they were not drinking so heavily and if she had not destroyed her artwork.
When she is done telling you her ordeal from the weekend, Yolanda suddenly becomes tight-lipped and asks for reassurance that you wont speak about this with anyone else. She even requests that you do not include this in your session notes.
For your discussion response, consider the APA Code of Ethics General Principles (Beneficence & Nonmaleficence, Fidelity and Responsibility, Integrity, Justice, and Respect for Peoples Rights and Dignity). 1) Describe if you would keep Yolandas revelation confidential; 2) Select two General Principles that helped you make that decision (and elaborate on why you chose those principles when considering your decision). Post should be approximately 250 words long.