Hello friends, hope you had a great new years celebration!
Can anyone offer their input into this question? What would you do if someone from your past mental health treatment team told one of your friends who’s on the same treatment team very personal stuff about yourself that is quite frankly none of your friends business which the friend didn’t even ask to know about anyways, and which given information goes against the confidentiality laws?
This I found out has just occurred to me. My old nurse told a friend that she saved me from a bloody mess and described what I did to myself and told him that she had to wipe me up herself, the various details etc, and told him that I was a very sick individual and that he shouldn’t associate himself with me. I was told there were more details, but he didn’t want to further upset me because I was getting a bit irritable with the parts that he had already told me.
Has anything like this ever happened to anyone here before? What do I do?
Yeah confidentiality is never really seen through. Sorry this happend that person is an ■■■■■■■. Never had this happen to me though. Hopefully your friendship will ring true and they will remain your friend and see past that ■■■■. Maybe even offer a little empathic sympathy.
Thank you BryanAshley for your words, I appreciate it! Yes, my friend is seeing past this, and he’s really upset that she would tell him something like that. He’s a good friend indeed.
Glad to hear nothing like this has happened to you!
I think that this would just increase my paranoia, I do not know what you should do. Something similar happened to me over a decade ago when I lived in my auto in America, some people on the net told others that they should not have anything to do with me because five agencies were after me. I do not know if they were just talking bs as people often do, but after all these years I am writing here. All this just increased my paranoia at the time.
Well, you have the right to be an a**hole about it and complain to her superior or her boss or whatever she has. Of course then you will create an enemy. But there are laws.
Or you could embarrass her and confront her directly. But not only would that create a problem for you, it might create a problem for your friend.
Of course you could be sneaky and go over her head and complain anonymously.
In the big picture, she might have done this to other people so if you busted her you might be doing other clients a favor.
The problem with these mental health teams in which there are many patients is that anybody can write about anybody on the net because patients may not have any confidentiality requirements in the same way as it is in the psych wards. In the smaller towns this can be especially a problem, because people know each other.
Thank you Nick for these options you have listed! I would like to confront her directly, but am afraid the outcome will leave me feeling defeated, and more distressed. Of course it could go the other way and she could feel sincerely sorry, and end up being embarrassed like you said.
This is something I would never do, but I’m playing this in my head that I will tell her colleagues about her own psychiatric problems which she has told me about. Of course I would never do that, but it’s nice to play a little “what if-revenge film” in your mind.
I might file a grievance report, even though I had just filed one last week against another person. I just want to thank you for this list of options, they’re all good! Thank you Nick and take care!
This patient confidentiality is a good subject matter. For example when people are in the psych wards they learn and hear many matters that they would not otherwise know. For example, once one business executive was brought by cops to the psych ward when I was there. He did not want to stay there and tried to escape and he was brought back again. I just welcomed him back to the unit. I am sure he would not like if his personal psych troubles would be told to others. So these are some gray areas.
Good point, I always found it in bad taste when the nurses would pass out medications to the patients at the psych ward while we were all eating, and the nurses would come up to you and say “Here YakDip, here’s your risperadol, zyprexa, and depakote” Oh great I would think, now everyone at this table knows I’m on antipsychotics and a mood stabilizer. Which I guess isn’t really a big deal because probably the majority of the patients are on those too, but it’s still embarrassing!
It’s best not to put too much faith in the confidentiality rules. I’ve had sensitive personal information shared with people who had no business knowing it. Keep that in mind when you receive therapy.
Thank you crimby, you certainly have a point. I was shocked to learn that the therapist dictates what has been discussed during the session which the psychiatrist has access to. Which is good and bad, but in the least, anxiety causing.
I’m sorry you had personal information shared to others. That’s awful.
You see there is the confidentility requirement between a patient and the psych worker (any psych worker), but there is no confidentility requirement between patients. So whatever patients hear or learn about other patients they might share it which, of course, is unfortunate. At the psych wards people tell stories what has happened to them and why they are at the psych wards and so on.
I’ve never liked it when we sat around in a circle at group and were required to tell everyone why we were there. Even sometimes we had to say what we were diagnosed with.
My friend wants to sue various people from the agency. Would be interesting to see what the outcome is, although if he’s successful I hope the agency itself doesn’t have to pay, but the specific people being targeted.
If they are both part of the same treatment team then I’m not sure they have broken any confidentiality laws. Still they only needed to tell information that was important for your treatment and didn’t need to go into the details that it sounds like they did.
Thanks Barbie, the nurse knew she was not supposed to be telling such information to other patients, She told my friend not to tell anybody what she said otherwise she’ll lose her job (!)
There are strict laws protecting the patients privacy - If you really wanted to - you can take legal action and get compensated.
If it was me, I would probably take some kind of legal action.
I take my private medical information/records very seriously -
What this nurse did was extremely negligent and violated these privacy laws
Thank you Wave! True words you speak, it’s good to take this stuff seriously, as it could prevent people from coming back to the agency and speak of their problems when they have an idea that it might be told to anyone!
