On-Demand Course

at your pace for only $12.95.

Ethical practice extends beyond codes, rules, and crisis moments. In this course, you’ll explore the role of culture, context, power, and social location in clinical care. You’ll also gain access to downloadable resources, including practice briefs, handouts, and infographics that you can save and revisit any time.
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Why Take This Course

Many ethics courses focus on professional codes, legal requirements, and formal decision-making models. These are essential, but they do not fully capture the complexity of real clinical practice. This course helps expand your ethical lens by considering the following questions:

  • How do your assumptions shape what you see as ethical?

  • How does your social location shape your interactions with individuals from differing social locations?

  • How does power operate in a therapeutic context? In a supervisory context? In a community context?

  • How can you practice with greater accountability and relational awareness?

What You'll Learn

By the end of this course, you will be better able to:

  • describe the role of sociocultural attunement in ethical decision making;

  • recognize ethics as an everyday dimension of behavioral health practice, rather than only a response to formal dilemmas or rule violations; and

  • apply a structured ethical decision-making approach that integrates legal requirements, professional ethics, client welfare, consultation, documentation, and ongoing professional responsibility.

Who Developed This Course

Senior Instructor Teresa McDowell

Teresa McDowell, EdD, LMFT is professor emerita at Lewis & Clark, where she served as department chair and co-founded the college’s Problem Gambling Services. With over 40 years of experience as a clinician, educator, administrator, and consultant, Teresa focuses on workforce development, equity-based clinical practice, integrated treatment for problem gambling, and clinical supervision. She is a social researcher, program evaluator, and consultant with Partners in Social Research and Senior Instructor for ACORN. Dr. McDowell has authored more than 50 scholarly publications and is lead author of Socioculturally Attuned Family Therapy: Applying Third Order Thinking to Theory and Practice (3rd Ed., 2026).

What About CE Hours

A certificate of completion will be available on the Student Dashboard after you complete all required course activities and the course evaluation survey.

ACORN is approved by the Mental Health & Addiction Certification Board of Oregon (MHACBO), Provider ID: 26-0044, to provide continuing education courses. Additionally, ACORN is approved by the National Board for Certified Counselors (NBCC) as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 7274. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. ACORN is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs.

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at your pace, 100% online

Who This Course Is For

Behavioral health professionals across the United States, including:

  • mental health counselors (MHC / LPC), marriage and family therapists (MFT / LMFT), art therapists (AT / LAT), social workers (SW / LSW / LCSW), psychologists;

  • Certified Alcohol and Drug Counselors (CADCs) and Certified Gambling Addiction Counselors (CGACs);

  • Qualified Mental Health Associates (QMHAs) and Qualified Mental Health Professionals (QMHPs);

  • peers and behavioral health supervisors.

Course Foundation

This course is grounded in the ideas of socioculturally attuned ethical practice developed by Drs. Teresa McDowell, Carmen Knudson-Martin, and J. Maria Bermudez.

  • The socioculturally attuned approach invites providers to look beyond individual choices and immediate clinical concerns. It encourages them to consider how culture, relationships, power, and social context shape people’s lives and experiences.

  • This approach challenges providers to “expand the lens” so that they can better understand how larger systems shape individuals, families, communities, and therapeutic choices.

  • This approach does not ask providers to abandon professional codes or clinical judgment. Instead, it encourages them to integrate codes, laws, relational awareness, and sociocultural context in ways that promote humility, accountability, and ethical responsiveness.

FAQ

Answers to common questions about the course, its approach, and its relevance to ethical behavioral health practice.

  • What is socioculturally attuned ethical practice?

    Socioculturally attuned ethical practice is an approach to ethics that considers culture, context, power, identity, social location, privilege, marginalization, and relational responsibility as central to ethical decision making.

  • How is this course different from a traditional ethics course?

    Traditional ethics courses often focus on professional codes, laws, and formal dilemmas. This course focuses on ethics as an everyday dimension of behavioral health practice, shaped by culture, relationships, power, and broader social systems.

  • Does this course replace professional ethics codes?

    No. Professional ethics codes remain essential. This course helps participants deepen their understanding of ethical practice by considering how codes are applied within cultural, relational, and power-aware contexts.

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Important Disclaimer

The information provided in this course is for educational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice.

Laws, rules, regulations, and professional codes may change, and information presented in this course may not reflect the most current requirements at the time it is reviewed. You should not act, or refrain from acting, based solely on information provided in this course without reviewing current laws, administrative rules, professional codes, and board guidance, and seeking legal advice from qualified counsel in the relevant jurisdiction when appropriate.
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