I am active on Social Media and have devised a social media policy to clearly set out to my clients how I operate ethically and professionally on public sites. The policy is also to protect my client’s privacy and confidentiality, and our therapeutic relationship. If there are any questions about the policy, feel free to ask during our session or via email.
I do not leverage a Facebook Professional Page for my therapy practice at this point. My personal Facebook account is private and for friends and family only. Please respect that I will not accept friends or contact requests from any client or colleagues on my personal Facebook account to maintain confidentiality.
You are welcome to look at my LinkedIn profile, but I will not accept any connection requests from therapy clients. I post articles, quotes, helpful tips and my blog posts. You are welcome to follow this LinkedIn feed or share any articles I provide. If you do share anything then please remember that sharing can compromise your confidentially or our working alliance. I will not offer any personal help or support through LinkedIn.
Website & Blog
I regularly blog about mental health and general wellbeing topics providing useful self-help tips on my website. I have no expectation that you will follow this or comment on it. Just like LinkedIn, remember commenting can compromise your confidentiality. If you choose to comment on it, I suggest you consider using a pseudonym name and a different email address in order to protect your privacy. Additionally, if you choose to follow this via email then your contact details will be stored on my computer.
Search engines
I will not search for clients via google or any other search engine. I will also not follow or comment on current or past client’s blog posting. Either of these activities could jeopardise our therapeutic relationship. If there are things that are online that you wish to share with me then you need to please bring them to your therapy session so that we can talk about it.
Communication
Do not message me via Facebook, twitter or LinkedIn. I do not monitor these accounts actively and these accounts are not secure. If you wish to contact me in between our sessions then either telephone, text or email me. Please rest assure that I will respond to your messages as soon as possible but take into account that I may be with clients or in other engagements and hence wont able to respond in an immediate fashion. I suggest using our sessions for the key discussions and hence limit other communications as much as possible.
Google + and advertising sites
You may have found out about me on sites such as google or other places that list businesses. Some of these sites allow users to add a review. If you have found me via these sites you are not obliged to rate or endorse me as a client, and I will never ask you to leave a review. You do have the right to comment on these sites.
Remember these sites are public forum and any sharing any information could reveal who you are. If you do have any issues that are troubling you, then it is best you bring it to our sessions together as this can be an important part of our therapy.
Location Services
In order to maintain confidentiality, I encourage my clients to not check in at the location of my practice.
