Vol. 7, Issue 1, Part J (2025)

The rapid digitalization of mental health services has reshaped the ethical terrain of social work practice. While online counseling offers expanded access and flexibility, it also generates complex ethical dilemmas concerning confidentiality, relational depth, informed consent, and digital inequality. This article critically examines the ethical implications of digital counseling in mental health social work through a multi-level framework that integrates normative theory, professional codes, and empirical research. The analysis explores how practitioners navigate morally ambivalent situations in technologically mediated environments, often under institutional and infrastructural constraints. It argues that ethical social work in the digital age cannot rely solely on individual moral agency, but requires supportive organizational cultures, reflexive professional education, and anticipatory public policy. The article concludes with a call for ethically grounded digital infrastructures, dynamic regulatory frameworks, and the reinvention of care values in technologically saturated contexts.