Family Therapy

No Secrets Policy:

Family therapy can have many benefits to you including, but not limited to, better communication, improved intimacy and respect, securing healthy bond, and developing an overall better feeling about your relationship and emotional connection. There are some times during family and family therapy where I may ask you to do individual sessions to deal with specific issues pertaining to you. It is important that all active participants in therapy know and feel that we are not keeping secrets from them. I may periodically bring up things from your individual sessions in family or family sessions, so it is your responsibility to explain and give details to all active participants in therapy about what we talked about. Keeping secrets is inauthentic and therefore unproductive in creating a stronger, healthier relationship. If you are committed to working on your relationship, I ask that there be no secrets. If you have a secret that you need help disclosing in the context of a therapy session with a participant, you may bring it up to me prior to the session or in one of our individual sessions.

This written “no secrets” policy is intended to inform you, the participant in family therapy, that when working with a family, the family is the unit of treatment. For instance, if there is a request for the treatment records of the individual, or family, authorization will be requested of all members of the treatment unit before releasing confidential information to third parties. Also, if the records are subpoenaed, the psychotherapist privilege will be asserted on behalf of the treatment unit. During the course of work with a family, smaller parts of the treatment unit (e.g., an individual) may be seen for one or more sessions. These sessions should be seen by you as part of the work on behalf of the family, unless otherwise indicated. If you are involved in one or more of such sessions, please understand that generally these sessions are confidential in the sense that confidential information will not be released to a third party unless required by law to do so or unless written authorization from the treatment unit is given. In fact, since those sessions can and should be considered part of the family therapy, authorization from all individuals of the treatment unit must be given before releasing any confidential information to a third party. There may be times when it is appropriate to share information that is learned in an individual session (or a session with only a portion of the treatment unit present) with the entire treatment unit – that is, the family. The best judgment will be used as to whether, when, and to what extent disclosures will be made to the treatment unit, and will also, if appropriate, give the individual or smaller part of the treatment unit being seen the opportunity to make this disclosure. Thus, if you feel it necessary to talk about matters that you absolutely want shared with no one, you might want to consult an individual therapist who can treat you individually. This “no secrets policy” is intended to treat the patient (the family unit) by preventing, to the extent possible, a conflict of interest to arise where an individual’s interests may not be consistent with the interests of the unit being treated. For instance, information learned in the course of an individual session may be relevant or even essential to the proper treatment of the family during their therapy. The highest regard to what is in the best interest of the unit of treatment will be taken into consideration when deciding whether to share information or not. If not sharing the information is contrary to the family goals there may be a situation where therapy is terminated. The policy is intended to prevent the need for such termination. Please feel free to ask any questions you have of this policy.