Psychologist Break Confidentiality

When working as a counselor or psychologist there will be various dilemmas that will require the therapist to make the decision to break confidentiality with the client. Sometimes therapist are stuck in the dilemma whether it is ethical appropriate to bridge that therapist-client confidentiality. The article, “Adolescent Health Risk Behaviors: When Do Pediatric Psychologist Break Confidentiality?” discusses a study conducted to determine when pediatric psychologist deemed it appropriate to break confidentiality between their adolescent patients. The study included vignettes about patients engaging in health risk behaviors. Participants had to respond to the survey based on when they would break the confidentiality with their patients. The

participants of the study found it more appropriate to break confidentiality when risk behaviors were “more intense, more frequent, and of longer duration” (Rae, Sullivan, Razo, George, & Ramirez, 2002, p. 541).
The study determined that the participants were more likely to break confidentiality if the patient was a female smoker versus a male smoker. Furthermore, if their female patient was engaging in sexual behaviors, the psychologist was more likely to break confidentiality rather than if it was a male patient engaging in sexual behaviors. However, participants would only break their confidentiality if the frequency and duration of the incident increased. Therefore, if the incident occurred only once the participant would not break the confidentiality with the patient.
All participants agreed that, “Pediatric psychologist must break confidentiality and tell parents or other adults about risky adolescent behaviors when, in their professional judgement, the adolescent’s behaviors would result in harmful outcomes” (p. 542). Thus, the survey included questions such as, “Chris admits to having a steady girlfriend and engaging in sexual activity” (p. 544). About 79% of participants admitted to breaking confidentiality if Chris engaged in sexual relationships with his girlfriend nearly daily for the last year and 78% admitted to breaking confidentiality for sexual relationships occurred once several months. Hence, pediatric psychologist believed that any type of sexual activity between adolescent resulted in risky behaviors that needed to be reported. Overall, psychologist stated that, “maintaining the adolescent’s health is more important than maintaining confidentiality” (p. 547).