Every workplace or profession has rules and regulations that they follow to ensure the

workplace is safe and fair to all the people in the workplace. It provides directions and sets expectations
or standards to the workers that they should always uphold in their everyday life. The Psychological
Association of the Philippines adopted a code of ethics for Clinical Psychologists and this code remained
unchanged since 1980. The Board of Directors of the PAP made a decision to revise the code of ethics.
The goal of updating the code was to make the code more inclusive and applicable to all psychologists. A
committee was formed and they were strongly influenced by existing codes from other countries but
they ensured that the revised code was in line with the realities and constraints within the professional
environments of the Filipino Psychologists.

The Universal Declaration of Ethical Principles for Psychologist serves as a guide and a standard
for all psychologists to uphold their highest ethical ideals in their professional and scientific work. The
Universal Declaration has set of principles that are based on shared human values. It stands on the belief
that these principles will help the psychology community in creating a better world where peace,
freedom, responsibility, justice, humanity and morality will prevail. The application of the principles
varies across cultures, and must be in a local or regional setting in order to ensure their relevance to
local or regional cultures, customs, beliefs and laws. It is needed for every psychological organization
that they should keep the Declaration in mind, to apply the Declaration’s principles and related values in
teaching, education and other measures to promote respect and observance of said declaration.

After reading the document, I have to say that the most important part of the declaration are
the principles listed in the document. The Principles serves as a guide for us in what to do ad what to
follow in our profession. There are 4 principles stated in the document. The said principles are also
accompanied by values to further specify what the principle means. The first principle is the Respect for
the Dignity of Persons and Peoples. This principle is the most fundamental and universally found ethical
principle across geographical ad cultural boundaries and across professional disciplines. It means that it
is one of the most important and applicable to all professions out there. The main objective of this
principle is to have respect to all human beings regardless of social status, ethnicity, gender, capacities
or other characters. It means that we should treat people equally regardless of what they are and what
they do. This principle reminds psychologist to be flexible and understanding to all the people that they
encounter in the work field. The values within this principle tells us that we should respect all human
beings, respect for the diversity of the people, respect for the beliefs and customs but only limited if the
person poses a grave threat to their well-being. There is also the value of informed consent, privacy for
individuals, protection of confidentiality of personal information and finally the fair and justice
treatment of all people. The second principle is the Competent Caring for the Well-being of Persons and
Peoples. This principle tells us that we should always have a standard in caring for the well-being of
people. Being competent in caring also requires the application of our skills and knowledge to analyze
what are the appropriate steps in a situation as well as the social and cultural context. The values that
go with this principle are having active concern for the well-being of the clients, making sure that there
is no harm done, correcting or offsetting harmful effects, maintaining competence, and respect for the
ability of all individuals to make decisions for themselves. The third principle is integrity. Integrity
basically means that we should be honest, truthful and accurate in communicating. This includes
avoidance of incomplete disclosure of information, avoidance of biases, not using people for personal
gain and avoidance of conflict of interests and declaring them if these conflicts cannot be avoided. The
fourth and last principle is Professional and Scientific Responsibilities to Society. Our professional has
responsibilities to the society where we live in. it is our sole responsibility to contribute knowledge
about human behavior and help people understand themselves and to understand others. This
knowledge is used to help improve the conditions of the people. It is also part of the principle that we
should uphold a high standard in ethical ideals in all competencies.

As change is always happening in our society as time goes by, rules and laws also change to fit or
adapt to the new time we are in. Currently, we are experiencing a pandemic. People are not allowed to
go to social gatherings and crowded places to avoid getting the virus. Our profession has the nature of
seeing our clients face to face. Therapy sessions need you to be there physically for a complete diagnosis
of the client. This pandemic has limited the modern psychologist in terms of how they do their job. The
only means of communicating to people through online platforms. I think adding rules and guidelines in
online consultations or therapy sessions should be essential because we need to adapt to this pandemic
where people are not allowed to gather. It would be beneficial for the psychologist to adapt to this
setting for them to continue their profession and help the people in need.