Protecting Psychotherapy Clients From the Shadow of the Law: A Call for the Revision of the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts (AFCC) Guidelines for Court-Involved Therapy

Abstract

The Association of Family and Conciliation Courts (AFCC) published a set of guidelines a few years ago that called for the creation of what appears to be a new type of psychotherapy called “Court-Involved Therapy” (CIT) to substitute for the traditional psychotherapy sought by litigants in family court, though this may not have been the original intent. We posit the AFCC CIT Guidelines have suggested changes to typical psychotherapy practice, or perhaps even created a new form of therapy, that may have the unintended consequence of distracting from the psychotherapist's focus on the client's treatment needs and may result in not meeting the obligations to clients. The authors point out the flaws in the AFCC CIT Guidelines and further suggest that it is not best practices, standard of care, or harmless to clients and litigants to follow all of these guidelines. Finally, 14 suggestions are made for revisions of the proposal.