Free Ethics CE for Mental Health Professionals: The Zur Institute Library
Free Ethics CE for Mental Health Professionals: The Zur Institute Library
What It Is
The Zur Institute (California) maintains one of the most comprehensive free libraries of ethics continuing education resources for mental health professionals. The institute is APA-approved for CE credit and offers both free self-study resources and paid CE courses covering ethics topics that are underserved in standard licensure CE requirements.
What's Available Free
Free self-study resources (not CE-credited, but substantive):
- "The Complete Guide to Ethics in Psychotherapy" — 40,000-word reference covering dual relationships, boundary crossing, informed consent, social media, telehealth ethics, record-keeping, bartering, fees and money
- "Online Therapy" — comprehensive guide to telehealth ethics, HIPAA compliance, platform selection, informed consent requirements
- "Boundaries in Psychotherapy" — dual relationships, the myth of the blank screen, contextual vs. risk-factor approach to boundary decisions
- Ethics code comparison tool — side-by-side APA, NASW, AMHCA, AAPC, NBCC ethics codes by topic area
- State board ethics complaint data — compiled per-state statistics on complaint categories and outcomes
Free CE courses (CE-credited, APA-approved):
- "Ethics for Counselors" (2 CE) — free, covers informed consent, confidentiality, dual relationships
- "Social Media and Online Presence for Therapists" (1 CE) — free, covers LinkedIn/Instagram/Facebook policies, review sites, practitioner presence
- Annual free ethics webinars — topical, rotated periodically
Why It's Worth Bookmarking
Most ethics CE fulfills licensure requirements with minimal clinical utility — codes and scenarios that clinicians know. The Zur Institute library is different because it focuses on the genuinely contested zones: dual relationships in rural communities, bartering with financially limited clients, post-termination contact, social media policy design, telehealth across state lines. These are the decisions practitioners actually face and for which prescriptive ethics codes offer limited guidance.
Ofer Zur's writing on dual relationships and boundary crossings is a useful counterweight to the "no contact outside therapy" absolutism that was standard training through the 1990s. The contextual approach — distinguishing harmful from neutral or even beneficial boundary crossings — is better aligned with contemporary ethics literature and rural/small-community practice realities.
For supervisors specifically: The ethics code comparison tool and boundary decision-making frameworks are useful for supervision case consultation. Trainees often encounter ethics scenarios where the code answer and the clinically sound answer are in tension — the Zur library provides the conceptual vocabulary for working through those tensions explicitly.
Access
All free resources at zurinstitute.com/ethics/ — no account required for free content. Paid CE courses range from $20–$50/CE credit.
CE approval: APA (all 50 states + DC that accept APA CE), NBCC, California BBS, NASW.
Resource note: The Zur Institute is a legitimate, APA-approved CE provider with a well-regarded ethics library. Ofer Zur's positions on dual relationships are minority positions in some academic contexts but are supported by solid literature and are explicitly within ethical bounds per APA code. The free resources are substantive, not loss-leader samples.
Tags: ethics, continuing-education, dual-relationships, telehealth, boundaries, resource, professional-development