Description
October 29, 2025 | 9:00am-12:00pm
Virtual via Zoom
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Description:
The use of artificial intelligence (AI) is growing in the field of behavioral health in clinical, administrative, advocacy, policy, and educational settings. Behavioral health practitioners are using AI to provide and document clinical services, predict clinical outcomes, empower clients to self-monitor, provide crisis intervention, supervise clinicians, detect plagiarism, and write grant applications.
Alongside these advances, the use of AI ushers in a new era of ethical issues and risk management threats. Ethical practice requires that behavioral health professionals address key AI-related challenges, including AI’s impact on informed consent; privacy and confidentiality; client surveillance; transparency; clinical errors; algorithmic bias and unfairness; and plagiarism, fraud, dishonesty, and misrepresentation.
Rather than being overwhelmed by these fast-moving developments, Artificial Intelligence in the Behavioral Health Professions invites you to be informed. A foremost expert in ethics, Reamer uses real-world examples and dozens of case studies to provide insights into the ways in which behavioral health professionals are using AI, the associated ethical and risk management issues, protocols for ethical use of AI, and state-of-the-art strategies that will protect clients and practitioners alike.
Whether you enthusiastically embrace AI or are wary of its dangers, this technology is here to stay. As with any cutting-edge innovation, it will take time to fully comprehend both its opportunities and its pitfalls. At the very least, behavioral health practitioners must be active participants in these ongoing efforts and dialogues and be cognizant of the impact of AI on practice. After all, awareness and participation are at the center of what ethical practice requires.
Objectives:
• Identify ethical issues associated with the use of artificial intelligence to deliver behavioral health services
• Apply ethical standards in the behavioral health professions when using artificial intelligence
• Design and implement risk management protocols to protect clients and practitioners who use artificial intelligence
Presenter:
Frederic G. Reamer has been on the faculty of the School of Social Work, Rhode Island College since 1983. His research and teaching have addressed a wide range of human service issues, including mental health, health care, criminal justice, public welfare, and professional ethics. Dr. Reamer received his Ph.D. (social work) from the University of Chicago. He has served as a social worker in correctional and mental health settings. He has also taught at the University of Chicago, School of Social Service Administration, and the University of Missouri-Columbia, School of Social Work.
Dr. Reamer has served as Director of the National Juvenile Justice Assessment Center of the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention; as Senior Policy Advisor to the Governor of Rhode Island; and as a Commissioner of the Rhode Island Housing and Mortgage Finance Corporation, the state housing finance agency. Dr. Reamer served on the State of Rhode Island Parole Board from 1992 to 2016. He also served as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Social Work Education. He serves as Associate Editor of the National Association of Social Workers Encyclopedia of Social Work (Oxford University Press and National Association of Social Workers). Since 2012, Dr. Reamer has served as the ethics instructor in the Providence (RI) Police Department Training Academy.
Dr. Reamer has conducted extensive research on professional ethics. He has been involved in national research projects sponsored by The Hastings Center, the Carnegie Corporation, the Haas Foundation, and the Scattergood Program for the Applied Ethics of Behavioral Healthcare at the Center for Bioethics, University of Pennsylvania. He has published 25 books and more than 190 journal articles, book chapters, and encyclopedia articles.
Contact hours:
3 contact hours for social workers, licensed clinical professional counselors, and behavioral health professionals
3 category I contact hours for psychologists. CCSME is a pre-approved sponsor and provider of Professional Education Activities for Psychologists.
3 contact hours for drug and alcohol counselors. This course has been approved by CCSME, as a NAADAC Approved Education Provider, for 3 educational credits. NAADAC Provider #324712. CCSME is responsible for all aspects of the programming.
3 contact hours for CHES. CCSME is a designated provider of continuing education contact hours (CECH) in health education by the National Commission for Health Education Credentialing, Inc.
