You are a male psychologist who has a close friend, Valerie, who you know has had a habit of going in and out of disordered eating behaviours due to the relationships she has been in. In these past relationships you have helped her through them and she has become, you believe, a much stronger individual for it.
Recently her behaviour towards you has become more disjointed and she has started to avoid you on a regular basis.
One day Valerie randomly comes to you and explains that she has feelings for this guy, but she has no idea how to approach the situation as she does not believe that this guy would like her as she is bigger than a lot of the girls he normally goes out with. She also explains that due to her insecurities from the past about her size she has started to purge again. She wants you to help her with her issue.
You her friend, and somebody that knows her case well you agree to help her.
As you start to treat her and get her out of her purging habit, you start to notice a change in her behaviour towards you, something that has never happened before when you have helped her.
As your treatment of her progresses you start to realise that the guy she has had feelings for could possibly be you. This makes you very uncomfortable as a psychologist as it is very unprofessional to be involved with a patient, irrelevant of prior friendship with Valerie. As this is only a hunch, you decide to confront her about the situation so to abolish any form of doubt you might have.
Once she is confronted by you, she starts to react irrationally and denies that she has any feelings for you. Because of her sudden irrational behaviour you don't believe her denial of feelings for you and tell her that you believe she should seek further help with her situation from another trained psychologist.
She dislikes this, as she demands to only be treated by you and threatens to increase her purging if this request is not met. You don't feel comfortable continuing treatment due to your personal connection with her, which you believe is morally wrong. However you are also concerned for her safety as you do not want her to harm herself as it would be unethical for her to not get treatment at all. Furthermore you believe you treating her would not lead to a better outcome as you have no romantic feelings for her, so referral possibly is a better option.
It is proposed that you, as a responsible health professional, should refer Valerie onto another psychologist for further treatment.