Breaching Confidentiality with Adolescents: What do Australian Psychologists Think?

Congratulations to Dr Rony Duncan who has just published a paper around confidential health consultations with young people. Dr Duncan is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Adolescent Health and Murdoch Childrens Research Institute. She has a background in bioethics and has been drawn to the ethical dilemmas associated with providing confidentiality to young people.

Confidentiality is vital for building trust with adolescents. Clinicians cannot offer
confidential consultations unreservedly. Young people have different cognitive and social capabilities than adults, less life experience and are more likely to engage in risky behaviours. Determining when to breach confidentiality can be complex.

In her recent paper published in Psychiatry, Psychology and Law, Rony and her colleagues presented findings from a national surveyof 264 psychologists that explores the ethical dilemma of confidentiality with adolescents. The paper focuses on the considerations that psychologists use when making decisions about whether or not to breach confidentiality with adolescents in order to prevent harm.

The findings indicate that Australian psychologists view this topic as highly complex, and that they balance many different issues when determining whether a breach of confidentiality is necessary, many of which actually compete with one another. This study shows that training health professionals in the process of ethical decision-making and the scope of considerations around this process is important. It is also important to provide training about how to enact breaches of confidentiality when necessary, while at the same time sustaining the therapeutic alliance.

Rony E. Duncan, Ben J. Williams & Ann Knowles (2011): Breaching Confidentiality with Adolescent Clients: A Survey of Australian Psychologists about the Considerations that Influence Their Decisions. Psychiatry, Psychology and Law.

Available online – http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13218719.2011.561759

Article available here – Breaching Confidentiality with Adolescents What do Australian Psychologists Think

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