Confidentiality is one of the most significant ethical and legal issues in the field of mental health. Clients/patients rely on this confidentiality when they share their personal issues with the therapist.

Briefly discuss and share your thoughts and viewpoint on this discussion. Do you agree or disagree with this discussion? Why?

Most people are aware that confidentiality can be broken if the client is believed to be a danger to him or herself or someone else. A psychologist or other mental health professional may be required to break confidentiality in order to protect the client or the person that they are threatening to harm. For an example, if a teenage girl was court ordered to see a therapist due to allergy trying to commit suicide then the confidentiality tends to be soft because if she tells that she was only having thoughts of suicide when using drugs then the therapist can break the confidentiality and send in a report to the judge and or her parents, because she can cause harm to herself and or others. And if this teenager (under the age of 18) gets upset because of this was broken then she has no right or evidence that the therapist did wrong because there is a proven fact that she was in harm. Or if there was another reason why the therapist broke the confidentiality rule like if he/she spoke of their sessions with a loved one then yes it could be in the wrong of the confidentiality being broken, because the therapist is supposed to sit there and listen while you can vent out your problems/issues and if they speak about YOUR issues outside of session then yes I would say it is breaking the rule of confidentiality and I believe legal action could be considered. I would hate to know that the person who I "thought" I could trust and tell all my secrets and then knowingly hearing that they were spoken to someone else would really light my fire.