Although it happens rarely, one of the professional risk factors on the job for a psychotherapist is violence from a client. Some therapists are more exposed to this possibility than others, such as those who work with poorer, urban populations (because the rates of violence …
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I asked my former therapist once if he was afraid of being hurt by a client because his clientele consisted largely of abusive men, and he said that he’d only even felt threatened once or twice, and didn’t worry about it at all.
In one of our training clinics, the desks were equipped with a hidden emergency call button, because the clinic dealt with a lot of abused clients and their abusers.
It does happen. It’s just rare.
“Yet for professionals who work in family crisis centers in urban areas, they usually take on a wider role, sometimes similar to that of a social worker. ”
Um…yeah…social workers are actually professionals too. And we go into homes a lot, and we also don’t like being murdered.
This does not come as a surprise to me because there is an automatic risk when working with people. When you add in that these people are disturbed in some way, there is an even higher risk. I work with kids who are involved in both drugs and gangs, and the thought does not go through my head every once in awhile.
I work with substance abuses and perpetrators of domestic violence. the other night the police came and arrested my client in my office for armed robbery and physically attacking the person. He was attending a group for perps of domestic violence. Someone overheard he may have had a weapon. This is the first time I as a therapist have been scared. i guess his probation office told the police he had group that night.
I worked with abused, addicts, rapists, murderers, pedophiles, etc., for 30 years, in schools, jails, prisons, private practice and the only 3 times I ever was attacked was by teenage students in an alternative school.
As the field of psychotherapy becomes more and more flooded (there are 8 times as many therapists as the market can realistically and comfortably handle), therapists are increasingly pressured to see more dangerous clients, in more dangerous situations, for shorter periods of time. Each murder is tragic, no matter who dies. The murder of a dedicated psychotherapist is not only personally tragic, but should make the profession wake up to the fact that new therapists in practice are asked to take bigger and bigger risks for less and less pay.
In the old days, when therapists could see clients for longer periods of time and could limit their work to the office, we could do a better job of getting to know people, do more to help them control their impulses, and keep our work in the relatively safer confines of an office. Now we are being asked to visit violent people in their homes, at great personal risk. It’s a sad commentary on how therapists are now being treated as a commodity.