I think ethical committee findings should be made known to the public. There is a need to discourage unethical people from practicing as well as to caution the public on the same. Other practicing professions would learn to respect their clients and exercise maximum precaution. Having the findings made public may promote law enforcers to take action in place of the citizens who may be ignorant of the same.
People have a right to know the truth and the responsible actions taken over by their government. However, this could be used in some instances by some politicians to violate other peoples’ reputations. This could result in a bad image of the affected person although the claims may not necessarily be true. Ethical committees thus have a role to play in ensuring competence in the field of mental health. Professional developments programs and voluntary continuing competence evaluation programs have not been of much success in the past and may thus not be relied so much upon.
Both the practitioner competence and system safety are equally important. The likelihood of both failing may be low and thus in most cases, it’s either a performance problem or a safety problem. It’s wise therefore to recommend that ethical committee findings be made public since at the moment there is not even a single mechanism put in place to ensure that practitioners offer the best practices. Multiple authorities are charged with the responsibility of assessing competence thus the inefficiency. Most boards rarely assess the competence and a licensing board will only question competence if there is a complaint.
As the field of psychology continues to evolve there is sure evidence that it cannot go backward and future challenges in the mental health professional may be unseen at the moment. Since nothing much can be done at the moment to ensure the credibility of a mental health professional, licensing of legitimately trained and qualified professional mental health workers is the first step of ensuring safety to the client. Educating the public on the credibility of these mental health workers by making public the ethical committees’ reports should be the next step that would even force the workers to exercise a high degree of professionalism in their work.