Ethical issues specific to psychological practices with elderly people

In recent years, along with the increasing proportion of the elderly population, psychologists in different roles, such as researchers, therapists, educators, as well as many different professions, will work more with elderly people. For this reason, psychologists who have to comply with the Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct published by the American Psychologi-cal Association (APA) in any psychological practice they conduct (research, therapy, etc.) will need to increase their awareness of ethical issues specific to elderly individuals. Considering serious changes and losses in the cognitive, psychological, and physical characteristics, different ethical issues may need to be paid particular attention to elderly people. In this review, based on the characteristics of elderly individuals, the ethical issues that need to be considered in psycho-logical practice were addressed under the headings of informed consent, volunteerism, privacy, confidentiality, autonomy, abuse and neglect and appropriate solutions for each issue were dis-cussed on the basis of ethical principles. Psychologists and other mental health professionals need to develop their competence to work with elderly individuals by obtaining detailed knowledge of the characteristics of them and professional ethical principles for this group in order to solve the related ethical problems properly.