Social Media Policy

This social media policy was copied and adjusted to fit my practice. This policy was written by Keely Kolmes, Psy.D and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License, making it available to other mental wellness professionals.

Legal Requirements

The BCACC requires Registered Clinical Counsellors (RCC) who use social networking and other social tools to have a Social Media Policy. Please review this policy to understand my policies related to the use of social media and what you can expect with regards to interactions that may take place online. This policy will be updated in accordance with any changes regarding the use of social media as per the BCACC.

Friending and Connecting

I do not accept friend or contact requests from current or former clients on any social networking site and I do not follow clients on social media. I believe that adding clients as friends or contacts on can compromise your confidentiality and our respective privacy. It may also blur the boundaries of our therapeutic relationship. Clients who attempt to follow any personal accounts will be removed and may be restricted on the respective platform. When necessary, appropriate actions may be taken with respect to following community guidelines on social media. If you have questions about this, please bring them up when we meet and we can talk more about it.

Following

I publish updates on my website and I post and share wellness and therapy-related content on my social profiles. I have no expectation that you as a client will want to follow my blog or social profiles. However, if you use an easily recognizable name on social media and I happen to notice that you’ve followed me there, we may briefly discuss it and its potential impact on our working relationship.

My primary concern is your privacy. If you share this concern, there are more private ways to follow me on social media which would eliminate your having a public link to my content. You are welcome to use your own discretion in choosing whether to follow me.

Note that I will not follow you back. I do not follow current or former clients on blogs or social media. My reasoning is that I believe casual viewing of clients’ online content outside of the therapy hour can create confusion in regard to whether it’s being done as a part of your treatment or to satisfy my personal curiosity. In addition, viewing your online activities without your consent and without our explicit arrangement towards a specific purpose could potentially have a negative influence on our working relationship. If there are things from your online life that you wish to share with me, please bring them into our sessions where we can view and explore them together during the therapy hour.

Interacting

Please do not use messaging on social networking sites to contact me to engage in therapeutic dialogue. These sites are not secure and I may not read or respond to messages in a timely fashion. If you send me a message or reply, please note that I might not reply. If we have an already established client/therapist relationship, engaging with me using posts, @replies or other means of engaging with me in public online could compromise your confidentiality. It may also create the possibility that these exchanges become a part of your legal clinical record and will need to be documented and archived in your chart.

If you need to contact me between sessions, the best way to do so is by phone or email. Direct email at [email protected] is best for quick, administrative issues inside office hours, such as changing appointment times. See the email section below for more information regarding email interactions.

Use of Search Engines

It is NOT a regular part of my practice to search for clients on Google or Facebook or other search engines. Extremely rare exceptions may be made during times of crisis. If I have a reason to suspect that you are in danger and you have not been in touch with me via our usual means (coming to appointments, phone, or email) there might be an instance in which using a search engine (to find you, find someone close to you, or to check on your recent status updates) becomes necessary as part of ensuring your welfare. These are unusual situations and if I ever resort to such means, I will fully document it and discuss it with you when we next meet.

Business Review Sites

You may find my psychology practice on sites such as Google, Psychology Today, Yelp, Bing or other places which list businesses. Some of these sites include boards in which users rate their providers and add reviews. Many of these sites comb search engines for business listings and automatically add listings regardless of whether the business has added itself to the site. If you should find my listing on any of these sites, please know that my listing is NOT a request for a testimonial, rating, or endorsement from you as my client.

The British Columbia Association of Clinical Counsellors (BCACC) Standard for Promoting and Advertising Services states, “an RCC should never solicit testimonials, expressly or by implication, from clients or other persons who, because of their particular circumstances, may be vulnerable to undue influence” (BCACC Code of Ethical Conduct and Standards of Clinical Practice and Guidelines for Registered Clinical Counsellors, 2011).

Of course, you have a right to express yourself on any site you wish. Due to confidentiality, I cannot respond with confirmation of a past or present therapeutic relationship to a review on any of these sites regardless if the review is positive or negative. I urge you to take your own privacy as seriously as I take my commitment of confidentiality to you. You should also be aware that if you are using these sites to communicate indirectly with me about your feelings about our work, there is a good possibility that I may never see it.

If we are working together, I hope that you will bring your feelings and reactions to our work directly into the therapy process. This can be an important part of therapy, even if you decide we are not a good fit. None of this is meant to keep you from sharing that you are in therapy with me wherever and with whomever you like. Confidentiality means that I cannot tell people that you are my client, and my Ethics Code prohibits me from requesting testimonials. You are more than welcome to tell anyone you wish that I’m your therapist or share how you feel about the treatment I provided to you in any forum of your choosing.

If you do choose to write something on a business review site, I hope you will keep in mind that you may be sharing personally revealing information in a public forum. I urge you to create a pseudonym that is not linked to your regular email address or friend networks for your own privacy and protection.

Location-Based Services

If you used location-based services on your mobile phone, you may wish to be aware of the privacy issues related to using these services. If you have GPS tracking enabled on your device, it is possible that others may surmise that you are a therapy client due to your check-ins at my office (applicable to in person sessions). Please be aware of this risk if you are intentionally “checking in” from my office or if you have a passive location based services app enabled on your phone.

Emailing

I prefer using email only to arrange or modify appointments. Please do not email me content related to your therapy sessions, as email is not completely secure or confidential. If you choose to communicate with me by email, be aware that all emails are retained in the logs of your and my Internet service providers. While it is unlikely that someone will be looking at these logs, they are, in theory, available to be read by the system administrator(s) of the Internet service provider. You should also know that any emails I receive from you and any responses that I send to you become a part of your legal record. Emails containing therapeutic content will be addressed in session only. Clients wishing to maintain regular contact between counselling sessions to discuss therapeutic material may be billed at 15-minute intervals.

Conclusion

Thank you for taking the time to review my Social Media Policy. If you have questions or concerns about any of these policies and procedures or regarding our potential interactions online, do bring them to my attention so that we can discuss them.