Quote:
Originally Posted by sky dancer
I can't tell from your post what your therapist did and whether it was unethical or not. I know you feel she lied, and that there was a misunderstanding about confidentiality in your records.
I do hear you that you have unresolved feelings about your therapy and feel harmed and not helped by it.
If I were you, I would see the therapists supervisor and see if you can sort it out.
I can see that the new therapist telling you the old one was unethical did not improve your feeling of trust toward therapy even with the new therapist.
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There was no misunderstanding about confidentiality. She wanted me to fill out paperwork for therapeutic reasons well after the initial visits. I was concerned about it and inclined not to. She then simply lied to me about how my records would be handled in order to convince me. (I was told they would all be destroyed withing 7 days of discontinuation.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by sunrise
I would verify this with the clinic or the supervisor. I would not want my file out there with a bunch of c**p in it for all to see. Who told you that your file had been scrapped? I am not sure of the legality of destroying patient files.
As sky_dancer said, it's hard to tell if what your therapist did was unethical or not, or rather, if it's a complaint that the state board or the T's professional association would consider to have merit. Those are two different things.
As for filing a complaint, it's hard to know if that would be fruitful. If you want to pursue the latter, you could start with looking at the T's professional association and their guidelines and seeing if anything the T did violated any of these. Something like choosing one type of therapy vs. another for a specific problem might be more of a judgment issue than ethical, for instance, doing EMDR instead of talk therapy for trauma. It's hard to tell without more information. The part about "lied to me about how my records were handled" could be very serious if, for example, the therapist shared your records with people she shouldn't have. Are you in the U.S.? It seems like the medical establishment takes HIPAA violations very serious here.
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I went in asking for help with anxiety and depression because they were having a very negative impact on my life. She asked a lot of background questions at which point she decided that she could ignore what I wanted help with and do something more interesting while I (imo) reasonably assumed that we would be working on my original problem.
I believe this violates the informed consent portion of her ethical code.
When I questioned this in the first session with the second student and mentioned informed consent he looked shocked and said "and you're aware of that," as if it were already a subject of debate. When I questioned her behavior, he also frequently complained that "I didn't know the situation I was putting him in" and when I further debated the issue "You don't need anyone on your side, do you?" in an exasperated tone.
The third and more experienced therapist told me she laid a classic bear trap by asking me my feelings and then punishing me for them. It also seemed that he had some outside information about the subject due to a couple exclamations he used. ("So that was the ......." as if he were hearing the same information from a new perspective.) Due to the fact that the two locations are on the same campus, this is not out of the question.
Additionally, he was angry when I related my experience to him. He ended up yelling, "I've referred people over there" such that the adjoining offices could certainly hear and the session ended hours later than it was supposed to. While it is possible that he was simply trying to build trust, I find this unlikely.
They didn't say they would throw the file out, as the original therapist said. When I terminated therapy, they said should I choose to come back, a new file would be started implying the old one would not be used.
Sorry if portions of this are off topic or rambling. It's still kind of a raw nerve for me all these months later.