</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
pinksoil said:
I think it probably important to process with your therapist, why it is important for you to see your files.

Although you do have a right to see your files, it is a T's job to discourage that because as individuals in recovery from a mental illness, reading that a doctor or therapist wrote, can end up being more detrimental.

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">
I have to disagree with you there Pink.

The only way that a psychologist or doctor can deny a patient a copy of and/or review of their files is if the doctor/psychologist believes it would be extremely harmful to the patient to do so. Even then, that is only that doctor/psychologists personal opinion (or lie, in the event of a bad doc/psych.). This can be circumvented by having the doc/psych. send the file to their family doctor or doctor of their choice(which they must do under the law), and then the patient can go to that doctor and request a copy of their files.

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
I had a client a couple of weeks ago who wanted to see his file. I told him that I didn't feel comfortable doing anything that I didn't see as beneficial to his treatment. Instead, I asked him what it would be like if he was to write his own treatment notes. He discussed with me, what his own "progress note" would look like if he wrote it. We talked about how close or far away his interpretation was, from what was written in the chart. Most of all, we talked about why this was so important to him.

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post"> What could possibly be so detrimental to the patient? I think it's more of a power and control paradigm than anything else really, when doctors/psychologists/therapists etc. withhold as a matter of course, the patient's medical records. I'm not speaking about YOU Pink, I just mean in general. I don't know the situation with your patient, and perhaps it would be incredibly harmful for the patient to read them in his case.

If he left his old T and went to a new one due to a bad experience, I can understand wanting to see the files that were transferred to the new T. What the therapist/doc/psych. thinks and believes and knows about the patient determines the course of treatment, doesn't it?
I think there are very few instances where the therapy records could be harmful. There is also the question of professional accountability. If a patient believes he isn't getting proper treatment and wants to see his files to hold the practitioner accountable, all of the rest falls by the wayside.
Personally for me, I don't really care about my psychologists records on me, but then again, I like my psychologist, and I only care about the progress we make. If he wasn't a good one, and I suffered harm mentally because of it, yeah, I would want to see his records on me.