There was a message under it that said "i WISH my therapist would look for me on the internet. i post more truth about my life on the internet than i have the guts to say in her office. :/"
I thought this was interesting and went along with some of the things we've been talking about in class.
This shows some support for the idea that therapy in an online setting could be very beneficial because patients would disclose more information.
Also, I'm just wondering about the ethics of this. I don't see why a therapist shouldn't be allowed to look up a Facebook page of their clients? As long as they're not showing the pages to anyone else....it could give the therapist some insight to help the person.
That's just my opinion though! I just thought this was all pretty interesting! What do you guys think?
That is true. Is that breaking any rules? I wonder if it's a breach of confidentiality because the client has the option to tell the therapist everything or nothing at all? I don't know but this is really interesting! Good find Kayla!
ReplyDeleteI saw this on Sunday when I was reading the secrets and thought about all the benefits. I hope it doesn't break any rules because it seems like such a logical idea. We post a lot of interesting facts and tidbits on our Facebook profiles that could really help a therapist to understand us better. I'm facebook friends with my cardiologist and I think it helps keep him up to date with my life so that when I go in for appointments he can make better small talk and has a better idea of what I'm up to, how active I am, etc. I'm also friends with my dentist but I don't really know what the benefit is there haha....I'm from a really small town so we were friends before he was my dentist.
ReplyDeleteThis really brings up some good questions about how far a therapist should go. I agree with Ashley. I think it overall would be more of a helpful than hurtful thing for therapists to do. You have to figure that if the person has their facebook page public enough for the therapist to read it then it wouldnt really be breaking any rules. Or if it was private, they would have to send a friend request and be accepted. It seems alright to me.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting questions. It might be worth looking at the APA and ACA Ethical Guidelines to see if they cover this. If they don't....we could certainly ask some clinicians or counselors what their take is about this.
ReplyDeleteThis is super interesting. I had a moment today that I wish I no longer had facebook... you know when you see things on there that you really don't care about and then you decide to investigate further but it would've just been more beneficial to not know at all? I had one of those...
ReplyDeleteI just wonder also why people feel uncomfortable talking to their therapist. I am really interested more and more in do we see more "success" with cyber therapy or face to face counseling? Are their situations or events that are better dealt with in a certain way? I would bet there are studies on this and I should just look them up...
I found this fascinating because clearly the internet is something we take more seriously than we think. If a therapist submitted this, than I am interested to know why she feels so guilty about it. If we really do tend to portray our real personalities online, why is it so bad to do a little more research? In fact, I think that in some cases this could actually help a therapist get another view into what their clients act like when they have more anonymity.
ReplyDelete