Conversations that take place within therapy sessions are treated with an extremely high degree of sensitivity and never shared with anyone apart from in a few exceptional circumstances, which I’ll outline below.
1. IN SUPERVISION
Therapists need to work as ethically and safely as possible and one way that we do this is by having ‘professional supervision’ - this is a one-to-one meeting with a senior and experienced therapist where we discuss aspects of our work and get feedback. Supervisor's also treats the information they hear with the utmost care to ensure clients aren’t put at risk.
2. RISK OF HARM
A second reason that client information might be shared is when the therapist believes that something they’ve heard in a session strongly suggests that the client (or even someone else), could be at risk of serious and/or imminent harm.
In this case the therapist would speak to the client about their concerns if possible, and they may need to share their concerns with the clients doctor, the police or a mental health team.
To keep clients safe, therapists need to have adequate training to practise, be competent to work with the issues we take on and be in a position to physically and emotionally manage our work.
We also are required to have regular (monthly) supervision from a qualified senior counsellor; have appropriate insurance to carry out client work, and ideally be registered with a professional regulatory association. I comply with all of the above.
Therapists that do private work and handle client information also need to be registered with the ICO (Information Commissioners Office) and adhere to their data protection rules, which I also do.
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