Assessing boundary violations in psychotherapy: survey results with the Exploitation Index.

The usefulness of the Exploitation Index (Epstein & Simon, 1990) was evaluated in a survey of psychiatrists. Forty-three percent of the respondents indicated that at least one item alerted them to behavior they thought could have been counterproductive to treatment. Twenty-nine percent found that they were stimulated to make specific changes in future treatment practice. On average, female respondents endorsed fewer boundary violations than males.