Are you Protecting your Client’s Confidentiality?

Article written by Dean Richardson (see more…) on 22 Oct, 2012 in By/For Therapists | 0 comments

How many times this week did you break your Client’s Confidentiality?

This is an article intended to stimulate you and your mindfulness, as a practising therapist, towards actively thinking about concepts of confidentiality.

Protecting a person-in-therapy’s confidentiality might seem simple enough (simply don’t talk about the client in public, surely?) … but therapists who are not mindful – or, perhaps, lapse – about actively thinking about a client’s confidentiality may find that the unintended consequences of not thinking about confidentiality is quite shocking.

Not all forms of therapy need to practice all forms of confidentiality, of course. A massage therapist, aromatherapist or hypnotherapist (for example) may not need to be prepared to keep a client’s deep secrets contained.  Nevertheless, perhaps still being mindful of the potential for what might be told in confidence whilst, say, in a state of deep relaxation could be a good position to be in.

Professional Bodies Requirements of Confidentiality.

It should not surprise any of us to find that all therapy-related professional bodies make some for of reference to confidentiality – some more than others. Interestingly, whilst the British Association for Counselling & Psychotherapy (BACP)’s Ethical Framework for Good Practice in Counselling & Psychotherapy (pdf) is a detailed construct of working with people in counselling or psychotherapy, it doesn’t contain an explicit definition of the terms confidential & confidentiality.

So, let’s refer to a couple of other sources.

(i) Wikipedia

Confidentiality: Clinical and counseling psychology.

[...]information shared by the client with the therapist in the course of treatment is not shared with others. [...] exceptions to confidentiality, namely where it conflicts with the clinician’s duty to warn or duty to protect.  This includes instances of suicidal behavior or homicidal plans, child abuse, elder abuse and dependent adult abuse.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidentiality#Clinical_and_counseling_psychology

(ii) The Oxford Dictionary:

Definition of Confidential.

Adjective.

• Intended to be kept secret: confidential information
• [of a person’s tone of voice] Indicating that what one says is private or secret: he dropped his voice to a confidential whisper
• [attributive] Entrusted with private or restricted information: a confidential secretary

http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/confidential

Member of the BACP are required to adhere to the Ethical Framework in order to practice safely and ethically, protecting their clients during and after therapy.

Here are some citations from the BACP Ethical Framework :-

So, we might conclude so far that confidentiality is fundamentally about keeping what we are told secret, keeping the client’s identity secret, and even keeping the fact that the client is seeing us in therapy secret.

Definition of Secret.

Adjective.

• Not known or seen or not meant to be known or seen by others: how did you guess I’d got a secret plan?
• [attributive] Not meant to be known as such by others: a secret drinker
• Fond of or good at keeping things about oneself unknown: he can be the most secret man

http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/secret

 

With all this this in mind, and it is a lot to keep in mind, I would like to ask you a question as one therapist to another:

How many times this week…

…did you break your client’s confidentiality?

(continued…)

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Tags: BACP, Confidentiality, Ethical Framework, Mindfulness

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