A survey on ethics education at certified graduate schools of clinical psychology in Japan

The aim of this study was to clarify practical problems in teaching professional ethics as course works. In 2005, the Japanese Association of Clinical Psychology (JACP) surveyed all the certified graduate schools of clinical psychology for current ethics educations and problems encountered in delivering and developing the curriculum. A questionnaire on ethics educations was sent to 842 faculty members of all the certified graduate schools, for which 279 respondents (33.1%) returned completed questionnaires. 159 (58.2%) were professors and 80 (29.3%) were associate professors. The main results of the survey were as follows: 1. Although many of them were strongly interested in teaching their students ethics through their lectures and clinical practices, they were unsatisfied with their current curriculums and teaching methods. 2. Even though many of them recognized psychotherapy supervision for beginner students as ethically indispensable, they faced severe difficulties in securing adequate supervisory chances for their students. Finally, several methods to solve these problems for the faculty members in teaching professional ethics were proposed and discussed