Minors’ Rights to Confidentiality, When Parents Want to Know: An Ethical Scenario

This is the vignette that needs to be addressed to.

Case Scenario #5:

Jacob was a 50 year old African American man living with his 78 year old widowed African American father who suffers from mild dementia. He readily told you on intake that he was experiencing problems in his role as a caregiver for his father. Jacob was unemployed and said that it was difficult for him to find steady work. He appeared to be below average in intellectual functioning, leading you to wonder about his actual capacity to care for his father. He said they were living off his father’s social security check, and they had no friends or family members for assistance or support. He described their home as a run-down, messy trailer in need of many repairs, but they didn’t have the money to get things fixed up. He said it was very hard for him to live there because his father would “yell and scream at me and threaten to kick me out of the house.” Because of his father’s verbal abuse, he said that he at times “felt like hitting him,” but he denied ever having done so. He felt scared that his father might physically lash out at him in anger, though denied this had ever happened. You asked about the possibility of placing the father in a long-term care facility, but Jacob said that his father didn’t want to leave his home. He stated a social worker had met with them previously and she told him that his father was still considered competent enough to live on his own and couldn‘t be forced into a placement. At the next session, Jacob’s father comes in with Jacob. You notice a number of bruises on his arms and ask him how that happened. He immediately looks over at Jacob without saying anything and then Jacob replies, “Oh, he fell down,” but you are left wondering if Jacob had hurt his father and is lying about the fall.